thetennesseestar--2020-05-05--STUDY: Anxiety From Reactions to COVID-19 Will Destroy at Least Seven Times More Years of Life Than

STUDY: Anxiety From Reactions to COVID-19 Will Destroy at Least Seven Times More Years of Life Than Can Be Saved by Lockdowns

Medical studies show that excessive stress and anxiety are among the most debilitating and deadly of all health hazards in the world .
Beyond their obvious effects like suicide and substance abuse – these mental stressors are strongly related to and may trigger and inflame a host of ailments like high blood pressure , digestive disorders , heart conditions , infectious diseases , cancer , and pregnancy complications .
Based on a broad array of scientific data , Just Facts has computed that the anxiety created by reactions to COVID-19 – such as stay-at-home orders , business shutdowns , media @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus – will destroy at least seven times more years of human life than can possibly be saved by lockdowns to control the spread of the disease .
This figure is a bare minimum , and the actual one is likely more than 90 times greater .
This study was reviewed by Joseph P. Damore , Jr. , M.D.
, who concluded : “ This research is engaging and thoroughly answers the question about the cure being worse than the disease.
” Dr. Damore is a certified diplomate with the American Board of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of psychiatry at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University , an assistant attending psychiatrist at New York Presbyterian Hospital , and an adjunct professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy .
Scientific surveys of U.S. residents have found that the mental health of about one-third to one-half of all adults has been substantially compromised by reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic .
Examples include the following : • An American Psychiatric Association survey in mid-March found that 36 % of adults report that anxiety over COVID-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their mental health.
” • A Kaiser Family Foundation survey in late March found that 45 % of adults “ feel that worry and stress related to ” COVID-19 “ has had a negative impact on their mental health , an increase from 32 % from early March.
” Additionally , 19 % of adults said it is having a “ major impact ” on their mental health .
• A Benenson Strategy Group survey in late March revealed that the COVID-19 “ situation has already affected ” the “ mental health ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either a great deal or somewhat.
” • A Kaiser Family Foundation survey in late April found that 56 % of adults “ report that worry and stress related to ” COVID-19 “ is affecting their mental health and wellbeing in various ways , ” such as “ trouble sleeping , “ poor appetite or over-eating , ” “ frequent headaches or stomachaches , ” “ difficulty controlling their temper , ” “ increasing their alcohol or drug use , ” and “ worsening chronic conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but are not limited to : • anguish over the death of loved ones , although this is limited to a relatively small fraction of the public because the virus has killed one out of every 5,000 Americans , while one out of every 116 Americans die every year .
• media outlets that overstate the deadliness of COVID-19 by : • using false denominators that exaggerate its death rate .
• misreporting about the capacity of the virus to mutate and cause a large , ongoing death toll .
• government stay-at-home @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by : • a survey commissioned by the University of Phoenix in late March that found 44 % of U.S. adults are more lonely than they have ever been in their lives , which is a risk factor for suicide and many other psychologically driven fatal afflictions .
• the late-March Kaiser Family Foundation survey , which “ found that 47 % of those sheltering in place reported negative mental health effects resulting from worry or stress , ” a rate that “ is significantly higher than the 37 % among people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the late-March Benenson Strategy Group survey , which found that “ 71 % of Americans say they are concerned that ‘ social distancing ’ measures will have a negative impact on the country ’ s mental health – including 28 % who are extremely or very concerned about this.
” • government-mandated shutdowns of businesses in nearly every state that have cost millions of jobs and are reflected in the : • late-April Kaiser Family Foundation survey , which found that 35 % of adults and 55 % of workers “ have lost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hours or pay as a result of ” responses to Covid-19 .
• mid-March American Psychiatric Association survey , which found that 57 % of adults are concerned that responses to the pandemic “ will have a serious negative impact on their finances , ” and 68 % fear it “ will have a long-lasting impact on the economy.
” Among all of the figures above , the lowest nationwide measure of people who have incurred psychological harm from reactions to COVID-19 is the 19 % of adults in the late-March Kaiser Family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impact ” on their mental health .
This survey included 1,226 respondents and has a margin of sampling error for this result of ± 2.2 percentage points with 95 % confidence .
Therefore , at least 16.8 % of 255,200,373 adults in the United States – or 42,873,663 people – have suffered major mental harm from responses to COVID-19 .
This figure forms the first key basis of this study .
The Deadliness of Anxiety and Stress Medical journals are rich with studies that attempt to measure the lethality of stress , anxiety @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Determining this is very difficult because association does not prove causation , and unmeasured factors could be at play .
For example , a 2011 meta-analysis in the journal Social Science & Medicine about mortality , “ psychosocial stress , ” and job losses finds that “ unemployment is associated with a substantially increased risk of death among broad segments of the population , ” but there are conflicting theories as to why this is so .
One is that “ unemployment causes adverse changes in health behaviors , which in turn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simply , unemployment causes bad health .
The other theory is that bad health causes unemployment .
Both of these theories may be true , and factors that are not measured in the studies could be causing both unemployment and bad health .
Thus , it is very difficult to isolate these variables and determine which is causing the others and to what degree .
While trying to address such uncertainty , the meta-analysis examined “ 235 mortality risk estimates from 42 studies ” and found that “ unemployment is associated with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ studies controlling for covariates.
” Regardless of whether job losses from COVID-19 lockdowns are brief or sustained , the study found that the death correlation “ is significant in both the short and long term , ” lending “ some support to the hypothesis and previous findings that both the stress and the negative lifestyle effects associated with the onset of unemployment tend to persist even after a person has regained a job.
” Also of relevance to current job losses , the study indicates that added unemployment benefits , like those recently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to mitigate the deadliness of job losses .
This is because the meta-analysis found that the associations between unemployment and death in Scandinavia and the U.S. are not significantly different , even though the Scandinavian nations offer more generous welfare benefits .
Thus , the authors conclude that “ these national-level policy differences may not have much of an effect on the rate of mortality following unemployment.
” A broad range of other studies have similar implications for anxiety-related deaths wrought by reactions to COVID-19 : • A 1991 study published by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ psychological stress was associated in a dose-response manner with an increased risk of acute infectious respiratory illness.
” A dose-response relationship , as explained by epidemiologist Sydney Pettygrove , “ is one in which increasing levels of exposure are associated with either an increasing or a decreasing risk of the outcome.
” She notes that when this pattern occurs , it “ is considered strong evidence for a causal relationship between the exposure and the outcome.
” • A 2004 paper in The Lancet documents that “ stress and depression result in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might promote the initiation and progression of some types of cancer….
” The paper details many human and animal studies germane to the COVID-19 lockdowns , such as those dealing with a “ lack of social interactions ” that cause certain cancers to metastasize .
• A 2005 paper in the Journal of Experimental Medicine finds that “ psychological conditions , including stress ” trigger a “ sophisticated molecular mechanism ” that increases “ the likelihood of infections , autoimmunity , or cancer.
” • A 2012 meta-analysis in the British Medical Journal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distress and mortality from all causes , cardiovascular disease , and external causes across the full range of distress , even in people who would not usually come to the attention of mental health services.
” Furthermore , “ these associations remained after adjustment for age , sex , current occupational social class , body mass index , systolic blood pressure , physical activity , smoking , alcohol consumption , and diabetes.
” People with the lowest levels of psychological distress in this study had a 20 % greater risk of death , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a 94 % greater risk .
• A 2012 paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry analyzes the death rates of more than a million young males in Sweden who underwent a government-mandated military draft physical that “ included a structured interview by a psychologist ” during 1969 to 1994 .
This study is particularly relevant to the effects of the current COVID-19 anxiety because it involves nearly all the healthy young men of a nation and excludes those with “ severe ” mental or physical disorders because they were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finds : • Young men who were diagnosed with neurotic and adjustment disorders were 76 % more likely to die in the average follow-up period of 22.6 years .
A neurotic disorder is a problem dealing with anxiety , and an adjustment disorder – which is now called “ stress response syndrome ” – is “ a short-term condition that occurs when a person has great difficulty coping with , or adjusting to , a particular source of stress , such as a major life change , loss , or event.
” These @ @ @ @ @ @ @ millions of Americans who report that reactions to COVID-19 are seriously harming their mental health .
• Premature deaths associated with mental illness “ are not primarily due to suicide or accidents , although risk of both is increased , but to a range of natural causes , particularly cardiovascular disease.
” This suggests that the most pervasive harm from lockdowns does not manifest in obvious ways like suicides and overdoses .
• A 2015 paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology examines the death rates of all “ Danes who received a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adjustment disorders ” between 1995 and 2011 .
The study found that they “ had mortality rates during the study period that were 2.2 times higher than ” those of the general population .
• A 2015 meta-analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry provides a systematic review of 148 studies of death and mental disorders with follow-up times ranging from one to 52 years , with a median of 10 years .
It finds that the overall risk of death among people with mental disorders is 2.2 times that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ results out by condition , the mortality increases were : Among all of the results above , the smallest risk of increased death is 20 % in the 2012 meta-analysis .
This has a margin of error from 13 % to 27 % with 95 % confidence .
The lower limit of 13 % translates to an average of about 1.3 years of lost life per person .
Corroborating that figure , 22 of the studies in the 2015 meta-analysis included estimates for the average years of life lost by each person with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from 1.4 to 32 years , with a median of 10.1 years.
” None of these studies were for anxiety , but the low-end figure of 1.4 years provides additional evidence that those who suffer serious mental repercussions from responses to COVID-19 will lose an average of more than a year of life .
Therefore , the figure of 1.3 years of lost life is a bare minimum and forms the second key basis of this study .
This varies widely by person and could be : • 50 years or more for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one month or less for elderly persons who have cardiac events triggered by fear or loneliness .
• two years for the middle-aged people whose blood pressure begins spiking earlier in life than it would have in the absence of COVID-19-related stress .
In the science of epidemiology , or the study of human disease , ethical and practical constraints often make it impossible to conduct experiments that can definitively establish the effects of medical interventions .
This applies to determining how many lives might be saved by government lockdowns during the COVID-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death rates – or the number of people who die from the disease divided by the total population where they live – in nations and states that took different actions .
However , many other factors can affect these death rates , such as wealth , age , population density , government , hospital protocols , culture , genetics , diet , and exercise .
For example , New York State enacted one of the strictest lockdowns in the U.S. but has 22 times the death rate of Florida , which had one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ considerations , the highest possible figure for lives saved by lockdowns can be estimated by comparing the nations of Scandinavia .
This is because these countries are culturally , economically , and genetically similar to one another but have enacted very dissimilar policies to deal with COVID-19 .
In the words of Paul W. Franks , professor of genetic epidemiology at Lund University in Sweden : The Swedish approach to COVID-19 could not be more different from its neighbors , placing much of the responsibility for delaying the spread of the virus and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the public .
It ’ s now April and , albeit with some restrictions , Swedish bars , restaurants and schools remain open .
… This all contrasts the far more assertive physical restrictions imposed in the culturally similar neighboring countries .
Across the borders in Denmark , Norway and Finland , schools closed weeks ago and movement has been severely restricted .
Sweden has taken certain measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 , like limiting public gatherings to 50 people .
However , these can hardly be characterized as “ lockdowns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , schools , beaches , and other public places are open and bustling .
Comparing the current death rates of Scandinavian nations yields a maximum figure for the lives saved by lockdowns because Sweden ’ s plan involves more deaths in the early stages of the pandemic but less later on .
As detailed by Professor Franks , simulations show that the overall death rate is “ expected to be similar across countries , ” but “ unlike its peers , Sweden is likely to take the hit sooner and over a shorter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ occurring within weeks , rather than months.
” As of April 27th , the death rate in Sweden is 32 % higher than in the United States , 3.1 times that of Denmark , 5.8 times that of Norway , and 6.4 times that of Finland : Applying the Sweden/Finland death rate ratio of 6.4 to the United States , the maximum number of Americans who could have been saved by past and current lockdowns is 616,590 .
This figure is based on the most pessimistic projection of 114,228 deaths in the U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington .
It is calculated by multiplying 114,228 deaths by 6.4 and then subtracting the 114,228 deaths that occur regardless of the lockdown .
The figure of 616,590 lives saved by lockdowns in the U.S. is at the extreme high-end of plausibility because it : • uses the worst-case projection for the U.S. death toll .
• compares the death rate in Sweden to Finland , even though Denmark – which has also implemented a strict lockdown – has twice the death rate of Finland @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death rate doesn ’ t decline relative to its neighbors over time regardless of Sweden ’ s strategy to build herd immunity consistent with the following facts : • The Imperial College – whose cataclysmic projections of COVID-19 deaths have been a driving force behind government lockdowns – has acknowledged that “ the more successful a strategy is at temporary suppression , the larger the later epidemic is predicted to be in the absence of vaccination , due to lesser build-up of herd immunity.
” • A 2012 paper in the journal PLoS @ @ @ @ @ @ @ notes that “ when a sufficiently high proportion of individuals within a population becomes immune ( either through prior exposure or through mass vaccination ) , community or ‘ herd ’ immunity emerges , whereby individuals that are poorly immunized are protected by the collective ‘ immune firewall ’ provided by immunized neighbors.
” • Large portions of people are highly resistant to COVID-19 and experience no symptoms when they catch it , later making them firewalls against the spread of the disease .
For example , the New England Journal of Medicine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of pregnant women at two New York City hospitals found that 88 % of the women who tested positive for the disease were asymptomatic .
• S. states with strict lockdowns – like New Jersey and New York – have COVID-19 death rates that are three to five times that of Sweden ’ s : Nonetheless , this study uses the highly improbable and optimistic scenario of 616,590 lives saved by lockdowns .
This figure forms the third key basis of the study .
Combining the first two key figures of this study @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impacted 42,873,663 adults and will rob them of an average of 1.3 years of life , thus destroying 55.7 million years of life .
Combining the third key figure of this study with data on COVID-19 deaths , a maximum of 616,590 lives might be saved by the current lockdowns , and the disease robs an average of 12 years of life from each of its victims , which means that the current lockdowns can save no more than 7.4 million years of life .
In other words , the anxiety from reactions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , stay-at-home orders , media exaggerations , and legitimate concerns about the virus – will extinguish at least seven times more years of life than can possibly be saved by the lockdowns .
Again , all of these figures minimize deaths from anxiety and maximize lives saved by lockdowns .
Under the more moderate scenarios documented above , anxiety will destroy more than 90 times the life saved by lockdowns based on : • the mid-March American Psychiatric Association survey that found COVID-19 “ is having a serious impact ” on the “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adults .
• the 2015 meta-analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry that found a 43 % average increase in mortality for people with anxiety .
• the IHME ’ s midpoint projection of 72,433 COVID-19 deaths through August 4th .
• the fact that the current death rate of Sweden is 1 times the average of the other Scandinavian nations .
Even the figure of 90 times is likely a substantial underestimate of the total life destroyed by reactions to COVID-19 because it doesn ’ t account for : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , even though adolescents are disproportionately prone to stress-related suicides , substance abuse , and risky behaviors that cause fatal accidents .
• deaths caused by low levels of psychological distress – which have impacted an additional 20 % of adults beyond the 36 % with serious distress according to the late-April Kaiser Family Foundation survey – and are associated with a 20 % greater risk of death per the 2012 British Medical Journal meta-analysis .
• psychological conditions that are more deadly than anxiety , like depression and mood disorders .
Among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ serious impact ” on their “ mental health , ” there is a mix of conditions , and the 2015 meta-analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry finds that the increased risk of death is lowest for anxiety ( 43 % ) , while it is 71 % for depression , and 110 % for mood disorders .
• deaths from non-psychological causes , such as : • government-mandated and personal decisions to delay medical care , which has postponed tumor removals , cancer screenings , heart surgeries , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to early death if not addressed in a timely manner .
• economic decline and government debt , which have negative effects on healthcare , nutrition , education , and other variables that impact life expectancy .
Unlike analyses that only compare the number of deaths from COVID-19 to other causes , this study accounts for the years of life lost for each victim .
This accords with the CDC ’ s principle that “ the allocation of health resources must consider not only the number of deaths by cause but also by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the “ years of potential life lost ” has “ become a mainstay in the evaluation of the impact of injuries on public health.
” This doesn ’ t mean that the lives of young people are more important than that of the elderly , but it recognizes and accounts for the facts that : • humans can not ultimately prevent death ; they can only delay it .
• there is a material difference between a malady that kills a 20 year-old in the prime of her life and one that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ died a month later .
A possible argument against this study is that it isn ’ t proper to compare anxiety to COVID-19 because the effects of anxiety often don ’ t kill until the distant future , while the deaths from COVID-19 are happening right now .
Such logic relegates the harms of mental distress to years away , but the facts are clear that it can kill immediately , make life a nightmare in the present , and produce current and lasting physical ailments that end in early death .
More @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any random unit of time , as opposed to an entire lifetime , is shortsighted and exclusionary .
Other distinctions , such as whether or not the cause of death is contagious , are similarly myopic .
The primary issues are prevention and harm , and the difference between them ultimately determines how much life is saved or destroyed .
A final note for readers who are experiencing anxiety : Healthcare professionals can reduce these effects , so seek help .
Dr. Andrew Glen is a Professor Emeritus of Operations Research from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a thirty-year U.S. Army veteran and an award-winning researcher in the field of computational probability .
James D. Agresti is the president of Just Facts , a think tank dedicated to publishing rigorously documented facts about public policy issues .

by Andrew Glen, Ph.D. and James D. Agresti
Medical studies show that excessive stress and anxiety are among the most debilitating and deadly of all health hazards in the world. Beyond their obvious effects like suicide and substance abuse – these mental stressors are strongly related to and may trigger and inflame a host of ailments like high blood pressure, digestive disorders, heart conditions, infectious diseases, cancer, and pregnancy complications.
Based on a broad array of scientific data, Just Facts has computed that the anxiety created by reactions to COVID-19 – such as stay-at-home orders, business shutdowns, media exaggerations, and legitimate concerns about the virus – will destroy at least seven times more years of human life than can possibly be saved by lockdowns to control the spread of the disease. This figure is a bare minimum, and the actual one is likely more than 90 times greater.
This study was reviewed by Joseph P. Damore, Jr., M.D., who concluded: “This research is engaging and thoroughly answers the question about the cure being worse than the disease.” Dr. Damore is a certified diplomate with the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, an assistant attending psychiatrist at New York Presbyterian Hospital, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy.
Stress and Anxiety Levels
Scientific surveys of U.S. residents have found that the mental health of about one-third to one-half of all adults has been substantially compromised by reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples include the following:
An American Psychiatric Association survey in mid-March found that 36% of adults report that anxiety over COVID-19 “is having a serious impact on their mental health.”
A Kaiser Family Foundation survey in late March found that 45% of adults “feel that worry and stress related to” COVID-19 “has had a negative impact on their mental health, an increase from 32% from early March.” Additionally, 19% of adults said it is having a “major impact” on their mental health.
A Benenson Strategy Group survey in late March revealed that the COVID-19 “situation has already affected” the “mental health” of 55% of U.S. adults “either a great deal or somewhat.”
A Kaiser Family Foundation survey in late April found that 56% of adults “report that worry and stress related to” COVID-19 “is affecting their mental health and wellbeing in various ways,” such as “trouble sleeping, “poor appetite or over-eating,” “frequent headaches or stomachaches,” “difficulty controlling their temper,” “increasing their alcohol or drug use,” and “worsening chronic conditions like diabetes or high blood pressure.”
Contributors to these mental health impacts include but are not limited to:
Among all of the figures above, the lowest nationwide measure of people who have incurred psychological harm from reactions to COVID-19 is the 19% of adults in the late-March Kaiser Family Foundation survey who reported a “major impact” on their mental health. This survey included 1,226 respondents and has a margin of sampling error for this result of ± 2.2 percentage points with 95% confidence.
Therefore, at least 16.8% of 255,200,373 adults in the United States – or 42,873,663 people – have suffered major mental harm from responses to COVID-19. This figure forms the first key basis of this study.
The Deadliness of Anxiety and Stress
Medical journals are rich with studies that attempt to measure the lethality of stress, anxiety, depression, and other psychological conditions. Determining this is very difficult because association does not prove causation, and unmeasured factors could be at play.
For example, a 2011 meta-analysis in the journal Social Science & Medicine about mortality, “psychosocial stress,” and job losses finds that “unemployment is associated with a substantially increased risk of death among broad segments of the population,” but there are conflicting theories as to why this is so. One is that “unemployment causes adverse changes in health behaviors, which in turn lead to deterioration of health.” Put simply, unemployment causes bad health. The other theory is that bad health causes unemployment. Both of these theories may be true, and factors that are not measured in the studies could be causing both unemployment and bad health. Thus, it is very difficult to isolate these variables and determine which is causing the others and to what degree.
While trying to address such uncertainty, the meta-analysis examined “235 mortality risk estimates from 42 studies” and found that “unemployment is associated with a 63% higher risk of mortality in studies controlling for covariates.”
Regardless of whether job losses from COVID-19 lockdowns are brief or sustained, the study found that the death correlation “is significant in both the short and long term,” lending “some support to the hypothesis and previous findings that both the stress and the negative lifestyle effects associated with the onset of unemployment tend to persist even after a person has regained a job.”
Also of relevance to current job losses, the study indicates that added unemployment benefits, like those recently passed into federal law, are unlikely to mitigate the deadliness of job losses. This is because the meta-analysis found that the associations between unemployment and death in Scandinavia and the U.S. are not significantly different, even though the Scandinavian nations offer more generous welfare benefits. Thus, the authors conclude that “these national-level policy differences may not have much of an effect on the rate of mortality following unemployment.”
A broad range of other studies have similar implications for anxiety-related deaths wrought by reactions to COVID-19:
A 1991 study published by the New England Journal of Medicine found that “psychological stress was associated in a dose-response manner with an increased risk of acute infectious respiratory illness.” A dose-response relationship, as explained by epidemiologist Sydney Pettygrove, “is one in which increasing levels of exposure are associated with either an increasing or a decreasing risk of the outcome.” She notes that when this pattern occurs, it “is considered strong evidence for a causal relationship between the exposure and the outcome.”
A 2004 paper in The Lancet documents that “stress and depression result in an impairment of the immune response and might promote the initiation and progression of some types of cancer….” The paper details many human and animal studies germane to the COVID-19 lockdowns, such as those dealing with a “lack of social interactions” that cause certain cancers to metastasize.
A 2005 paper in the Journal of Experimental Medicine finds that “psychological conditions, including stress” trigger a “sophisticated molecular mechanism” that increases “the likelihood of infections, autoimmunity, or cancer.”
A 2012 meta-analysis in the British Medical Journal finds “a dose-response association between psychological distress and mortality from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and external causes across the full range of distress, even in people who would not usually come to the attention of mental health services.” Furthermore, “these associations remained after adjustment for age, sex, current occupational social class, body mass index, systolic blood pressure, physical activity, smoking, alcohol consumption, and diabetes.” People with the lowest levels of psychological distress in this study had a 20% greater risk of death, and those with the highest levels had a 94% greater risk.
A 2012 paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry analyzes the death rates of more than a million young males in Sweden who underwent a government-mandated military draft physical that “included a structured interview by a psychologist” during 1969 to 1994. This study is particularly relevant to the effects of the current COVID-19 anxiety because it involves nearly all the healthy young men of a nation and excludes those with “severe” mental or physical disorders because they were excused from the exam. The study finds: Young men who were diagnosed with neurotic and adjustment disorders were 76% more likely to die in the average follow-up period of 22.6 years. A neurotic disorder is a problem dealing with anxiety, and an adjustment disorder – which is now called “stress response syndrome” – is “a short-term condition that occurs when a person has great difficulty coping with, or adjusting to, a particular source of stress, such as a major life change, loss, or event.” These are apt descriptions of the tens of millions of Americans who report that reactions to COVID-19 are seriously harming their mental health. Premature deaths associated with mental illness “are not primarily due to suicide or accidents, although risk of both is increased, but to a range of natural causes, particularly cardiovascular disease.” This suggests that the most pervasive harm from lockdowns does not manifest in obvious ways like suicides and overdoses.
A 2015 paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology examines the death rates of all “Danes who received a diagnosis of reaction to severe stress or adjustment disorders” between 1995 and 2011. The study found that they “had mortality rates during the study period that were 2.2 times higher than” those of the general population.
A 2015 meta-analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry provides a systematic review of 148 studies of death and mental disorders with follow-up times ranging from one to 52 years, with a median of 10 years. It finds that the overall risk of death among people with mental disorders is 2.2 times that of the general population. Breaking these results out by condition, the mortality increases were: 43% for people with anxiety. 71% for people with depression 110% for people with mood disorders. 150% times for people with psychoses.
Among all of the results above, the smallest risk of increased death is 20% in the 2012 meta-analysis. This has a margin of error from 13% to 27% with 95% confidence. The lower limit of 13% translates to an average of about 1.3 years of lost life per person.
Corroborating that figure, 22 of the studies in the 2015 meta-analysis included estimates for the average years of life lost by each person with a mental disorder. These “ranged from 1.4 to 32 years, with a median of 10.1 years.” None of these studies were for anxiety, but the low-end figure of 1.4 years provides additional evidence that those who suffer serious mental repercussions from responses to COVID-19 will lose an average of more than a year of life.
Therefore, the figure of 1.3 years of lost life is a bare minimum and forms the second key basis of this study. This varies widely by person and could be:
50 years or more for young people who commit suicide.
one month or less for elderly persons who have cardiac events triggered by fear or loneliness.
two years for the middle-aged people whose blood pressure begins spiking earlier in life than it would have in the absence of COVID-19-related stress.
Lives Saved by Lockdowns
In the science of epidemiology, or the study of human disease, ethical and practical constraints often make it impossible to conduct experiments that can definitively establish the effects of medical interventions. This applies to determining how many lives might be saved by government lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
One can easily compare COVID-19 death rates – or the number of people who die from the disease divided by the total population where they live – in nations and states that took different actions. However, many other factors can affect these death rates, such as wealth, age, population density, government, hospital protocols, culture, genetics, diet, and exercise. For example, New York State enacted one of the strictest lockdowns in the U.S. but has 22 times the death rate of Florida, which had one of the mildest lockdowns.
Given such considerations, the highest possible figure for lives saved by lockdowns can be estimated by comparing the nations of Scandinavia. This is because these countries are culturally, economically, and genetically similar to one another but have enacted very dissimilar policies to deal with COVID-19. In the words of Paul W. Franks, professor of genetic epidemiology at Lund University in Sweden:
The Swedish approach to COVID-19 could not be more different from its neighbors, placing much of the responsibility for delaying the spread of the virus and protecting the vulnerable in the hands of the public. It’s now April and, albeit with some restrictions, Swedish bars, restaurants and schools remain open. …
This all contrasts the far more assertive physical restrictions imposed in the culturally similar neighboring countries. Across the borders in Denmark, Norway and Finland, schools closed weeks ago and movement has been severely restricted.
Sweden has taken certain measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, like limiting public gatherings to 50 people. However, these can hardly be characterized as “lockdowns,” and Swedish stores, restaurants, schools, beaches, and other public places are open and bustling.
Comparing the current death rates of Scandinavian nations yields a maximum figure for the lives saved by lockdowns because Sweden’s plan involves more deaths in the early stages of the pandemic but less later on. As detailed by Professor Franks, simulations show that the overall death rate is “expected to be similar across countries,” but “unlike its peers, Sweden is likely to take the hit sooner and over a shorter period, with the majority of deaths occurring within weeks, rather than months.”
As of April 27th, the death rate in Sweden is 32% higher than in the United States, 3.1 times that of Denmark, 5.8 times that of Norway, and 6.4 times that of Finland:
Applying the Sweden/Finland death rate ratio of 6.4 to the United States, the maximum number of Americans who could have been saved by past and current lockdowns is 616,590. This figure is based on the most pessimistic projection of 114,228 deaths in the U.S. through August 4th by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. It is calculated by multiplying 114,228 deaths by 6.4 and then subtracting the 114,228 deaths that occur regardless of the lockdown.
The figure of 616,590 lives saved by lockdowns in the U.S. is at the extreme high-end of plausibility because it:
uses the worst-case projection for the U.S. death toll.
compares the death rate in Sweden to Finland, even though Denmark – which has also implemented a strict lockdown – has twice the death rate of Finland.
assumes that Sweden’s death rate doesn’t decline relative to its neighbors over time regardless of Sweden’s strategy to build herd immunity consistent with the following facts: The Imperial College – whose cataclysmic projections of COVID-19 deaths have been a driving force behind government lockdowns – has acknowledged that “the more successful a strategy is at temporary suppression, the larger the later epidemic is predicted to be in the absence of vaccination, due to lesser build-up of herd immunity.” A 2012 paper in the journal PLoS One titled “Immunity in Society” notes that “when a sufficiently high proportion of individuals within a population becomes immune (either through prior exposure or through mass vaccination), community or ‘herd’ immunity emerges, whereby individuals that are poorly immunized are protected by the collective ‘immune firewall’ provided by immunized neighbors.” Large portions of people are highly resistant to COVID-19 and experience no symptoms when they catch it, later making them firewalls against the spread of the disease. For example, the New England Journal of Medicine reported in mid-April that universal COVID-19 testing of pregnant women at two New York City hospitals found that 88% of the women who tested positive for the disease were asymptomatic. S. states with strict lockdowns – like New Jersey and New York – have COVID-19 death rates that are three to five times that of Sweden’s:
Nonetheless, this study uses the highly improbable and optimistic scenario of 616,590 lives saved by lockdowns. This figure forms the third key basis of the study.
Comparing Life Lost and Saved
Combining the first two key figures of this study, anxiety from responses to COVID-19 has impacted 42,873,663 adults and will rob them of an average of 1.3 years of life, thus destroying 55.7 million years of life.
Combining the third key figure of this study with data on COVID-19 deaths, a maximum of 616,590 lives might be saved by the current lockdowns, and the disease robs an average of 12 years of life from each of its victims, which means that the current lockdowns can save no more than 7.4 million years of life.
In other words, the anxiety from reactions to COVID-19 – such as business shutdowns, stay-at-home orders, media exaggerations, and legitimate concerns about the virus – will extinguish at least seven times more years of life than can possibly be saved by the lockdowns.
Again, all of these figures minimize deaths from anxiety and maximize lives saved by lockdowns. Under the more moderate scenarios documented above, anxiety will destroy more than 90 times the life saved by lockdowns based on:
the mid-March American Psychiatric Association survey that found COVID-19 “is having a serious impact” on the “mental health” of 36% of adults.
the 2015 meta-analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry that found a 43% average increase in mortality for people with anxiety.
the IHME’s midpoint projection of 72,433 COVID-19 deaths through August 4th.
the fact that the current death rate of Sweden is 1 times the average of the other Scandinavian nations.
Even the figure of 90 times is likely a substantial underestimate of the total life destroyed by reactions to COVID-19 because it doesn’t account for:
Unlike analyses that only compare the number of deaths from COVID-19 to other causes, this study accounts for the years of life lost for each victim. This accords with the CDC’s principle that “the allocation of health resources must consider not only the number of deaths by cause but also by age.” Thus, the CDC explains that the “years of potential life lost” has “become a mainstay in the evaluation of the impact of injuries on public health.” This doesn’t mean that the lives of young people are more important than that of the elderly, but it recognizes and accounts for the facts that:
humans cannot ultimately prevent death; they can only delay it.
there is a material difference between a malady that kills a 20 year-old in the prime of her life and one that kills a 90-year-old who would have otherwise died a month later.
A possible argument against this study is that it isn’t proper to compare anxiety to COVID-19 because the effects of anxiety often don’t kill until the distant future, while the deaths from COVID-19 are happening right now. Such logic relegates the harms of mental distress to years away, but the facts are clear that it can kill immediately, make life a nightmare in the present, and produce current and lasting physical ailments that end in early death. More importantly, tallying the life lost in any random unit of time, as opposed to an entire lifetime, is shortsighted and exclusionary.
Other distinctions, such as whether or not the cause of death is contagious, are similarly myopic. The primary issues are prevention and harm, and the difference between them ultimately determines how much life is saved or destroyed.
A final note for readers who are experiencing anxiety: Healthcare professionals can reduce these effects, so seek help.
– – –
Dr. Andrew Glen is a Professor Emeritus of Operations Research from the United States Military Academy. He is a thirty-year U.S. Army veteran and an award-winning researcher in the field of computational probability.
James D. Agresti is the president of Just Facts, a think tank dedicated to publishing rigorously documented facts about public policy issues.


thetennesseestar--2020-05-05--Davidson County Officials Still Can’t Back up Claim that Surrounding Counties Had More Confirmed COV

Davidson County Officials Still Can’t Back up Claim that Surrounding Counties Had More Confirmed COVID-19 Cases

As of press time Monday , Davidson County officials still would not demonstrate precisely how “ surrounding counties ” had more confirmed COVID-19 cases than Davidson itself did , as they attested last Friday Metro Coronavirus Task Force Chair Alex Jahangir said at a press conference Friday that Davidson County had 2,832 confirmed COVID-19 cases .
Jahangir also said there were an additional 3,227 cases in the surrounding counties — an increase of 955 in one day .
Now , for the first time – Jahangir went on to say – the surrounding counties had more cases than Davidson County @ @ @ @ @ @ @ break those numbers down county-by-county .
As reported , Trousdale County had 1,344 reported COVID-19 cases at its Trousdale Turner Correctional Facility .
Davidson County officials told The Tennessee Star last weekend that , yes , they did count Trousdale County and the confirmed COVID-19 numbers at its prison .
Brian Todd at the Metro Health Department said Sunday that Jahangir referred to counties in Tennessee ’ s Mid-Cumberland Region when he made that claim .
The Tennessee Star published a story Monday that incorrectly stated that the Mid-Cumberland Region consisted of seven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ County , Montgomery County , Robertson County , Rutherford County , Stewart County , Williamson County , and Wilson County .
In fact , the Mid-Cumberland Region consists of five additional counties , for a total of 12 counties : Cheatham , Humphries , Houston , Sumner – and Trousdale .
Six of those 12 counties do not border Davidson .
“ The statement made by Dr. Jahangir on Friday is accurate and is based on data received by the Metro Public Health Department directly from the Tennessee Department of Health , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mayor John Cooper , in an email to The Star Monday .
The email did include state Health Department spokesman Todd along with Song from the Mayor ’ s office .
So , taking that into account , will county officials finally break down the numbers and explain how they got to 3,227 cases in the counties surrounding Davidson ?
In reply to a follow up question requesting a detailed breakdown , Song responded , “ Please direct your inquiry to the Tennessee Department of Health.
” Chris Butler is an investigative journalist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Facebook .
Email tips to [ email protected ]

As of press time Monday, Davidson County officials still would not demonstrate precisely how “surrounding counties” had more confirmed COVID-19 cases than Davidson itself did, as they attested last Friday
Metro Coronavirus Task Force Chair Alex Jahangir said at a press conference Friday that Davidson County had 2,832 confirmed COVID-19 cases. Jahangir also said there were an additional 3,227 cases in the surrounding counties — an increase of 955 in one day. Now, for the first time – Jahangir went on to say – the surrounding counties had more cases than Davidson County.
However Davidson County officials would not break those numbers down county-by-county.
As reported, Trousdale County had 1,344 reported COVID-19 cases at its Trousdale Turner Correctional Facility. Davidson County officials told The Tennessee Star last weekend that, yes, they did count Trousdale County and the confirmed COVID-19 numbers at its prison.
Trousdale County does not border Davidson County.
Brian Todd at the Metro Health Department said Sunday that Jahangir referred to counties in Tennessee’s Mid-Cumberland Region when he made that claim.
The Tennessee Star published a story Monday that incorrectly stated that the Mid-Cumberland Region consisted of seven counties in addition to Davidson: Dickson County, Montgomery County, Robertson County, Rutherford County, Stewart County, Williamson County, and Wilson County. In fact, the Mid-Cumberland Region consists of five additional counties, for a total of 12 counties: Cheatham, Humphries, Houston, Sumner – and Trousdale.
Six of those 12 counties do not border Davidson.
“The statement made by Dr. Jahangir on Friday is accurate and is based on data received by the Metro Public Health Department directly from the Tennessee Department of Health,” said Chris Song, spokesman for Nashville Mayor John Cooper, in an email to The Star Monday.
The email did include state Health Department spokesman Todd along with Song from the Mayor’s office.
So, taking that into account, will county officials finally break down the numbers and explain how they got to 3,227 cases in the counties surrounding Davidson?
In reply to a follow up question requesting a detailed breakdown, Song responded, “Please direct your inquiry to the Tennessee Department of Health.”
This is a developing story.
– – –
Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected]


thetennesseestar--2020-05-05--Commentary: Mayor Cooper’s Tax Increase Would Torpedo an Already Reeling Nashville

Mayor John Cooper ’ s proposed 32 percent property tax increase is a terrible idea and would be detrimental to the city of Nashville , potentially creating a chilling effect across Middle Tennessee .
An increase of such magnitude would bring additional pain and suffering to untold thousands of Nashvillians already harmed by the government-mandated COVID-19 lockdown and the tornado that preceded it .
Decisions about tax increases should be delayed until next spring .
After the Mayor has made significant cuts and structural changes in Metro government .
It also must come after Mayor Cooper has hosted townhall meetings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ times he can educate voters about what he will have done to cut spending and exactly how he will operate the city in a fiscally conservative manner .
Mayor Cooper needs to lead by example .
Given that he was able to contribute $ 2 million of his own money to win election , he should emulate President Donald Trump and donate his pay to government service .
If he chooses to draw a salary , he should be the first high-ranking executive to take a significant pay cut and set a belt-tightening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pay cuts in Metro government , beginning with top officials in tourism , where a couple of salaries exceed $ 700,000 .
The Mayor has not done enough to cut waste or to find additional resources through a restructuring of government .
Major contractors such as Bridgestone Firestone are reportedly overcharging , and there is corruption in some departments that must be addressed .
Across-the-board pay cuts of 25 percent or more ( 32 percent , perhaps ? )
should be mandated for Metro employees earning more than $ 100,000 .
Just for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the mayor-to-be pledged to restore faith and trust in government .
So far , he is flunking .
If this were college , he could expect a pink warning slip soon .
He has done nothing to improve public safety in the city even though he received the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police .
Chief Anderson , a holdover from previous administrations , remains in place despite complaints and ongoing problems within the police department .
Firefighters , dispatchers , and other first responders had fallen to the bottom of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Plus , the proposed new budget offers first responders nothing in the way of a pay raise nor does it fund body cameras for police officers .
Questions must be addressed and answered : Why has Metro paid its employees full salaries during the lockdown when other non-essential workers had to apply for unemployment ?
Shouldn ’ t Metro employees have been laid off or furloughed if they were not performing essential services ?
How did the Mayor arrive at such an inflated number – a 32 percent increase – which will destroy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kill many small businesses ?
He is a loose cannon .
Again , why does the proposed new budget not include a pay raise for first responders ?
The federal money that Mayor Cooper said will provide some workers with a $ 3-an-hour increase is only temporary .
Besides , why should the federal government be supporting a basic service that citizens pay taxes to receive ?
.
We should not be surprised by Mayor Cooper ’ s ill-advised tax increase or the heavy handedness of a shutdown that considers abortion clinics and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down many businesses that provide services people need .
All across the nation , Democrats are operating from the same playbook .
High crime , high taxes , poorly performing schools , and government corruption are common in cities under Democrat control .
We should resist ANY tax increase this year .
If we fail in our efforts , those of us who want good government might just have to vote with our feet and move to a location governed by fiscally conservative elected officials .
Dr. Carol M. Swain is a former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Her Be the People News blog and podcast empower individuals to think independently , understand their responsibilities , and make a difference in the world .
Her latest books are Debating Immigration : Second Edition ( 2018 ) and Abduction : How Liberalism Steals Our Children ’ s Hearts and Minds ( 2016 ) .

by Dr. Carol M. Swain
Mayor John Cooper’s proposed 32 percent property tax increase is a terrible idea and would be detrimental to the city of Nashville, potentially creating a chilling effect across Middle Tennessee. An increase of such magnitude would bring additional pain and suffering to untold thousands of Nashvillians already harmed by the government-mandated COVID-19 lockdown and the tornado that preceded it.
Decisions about tax increases should be delayed until next spring. After the Mayor has made significant cuts and structural changes in Metro government. It also must come after Mayor Cooper has hosted townhall meetings in every Nashville neighborhood. At such times he can educate voters about what he will have done to cut spending and exactly how he will operate the city in a fiscally conservative manner.
Mayor Cooper needs to lead by example. Given that he was able to contribute $2 million of his own money to win election, he should emulate President Donald Trump and donate his pay to government service. If he chooses to draw a salary, he should be the first high-ranking executive to take a significant pay cut and set a belt-tightening example. This should be followed by pay cuts in Metro government, beginning with top officials in tourism, where a couple of salaries exceed $700,000.
The Mayor has not done enough to cut waste or to find additional resources through a restructuring of government. Major contractors such as Bridgestone Firestone are reportedly overcharging, and there is corruption in some departments that must be addressed. Across-the-board pay cuts of 25 percent or more (32 percent, perhaps?) should be mandated for Metro employees earning more than $100,000. Just for starters.
During his election campaign, the mayor-to-be pledged to restore faith and trust in government. So far, he is flunking. If this were college, he could expect a pink warning slip soon. He has done nothing to improve public safety in the city even though he received the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police. Chief Anderson, a holdover from previous administrations, remains in place despite complaints and ongoing problems within the police department. Firefighters, dispatchers, and other first responders had fallen to the bottom of the list of priorities before the crises. Plus, the proposed new budget offers first responders nothing in the way of a pay raise nor does it fund body cameras for police officers.
Questions must be addressed and answered: Why has Metro paid its employees full salaries during the lockdown when other non-essential workers had to apply for unemployment? Shouldn’t Metro employees have been laid off or furloughed if they were not performing essential services?
I am not finished.
How did the Mayor arrive at such an inflated number – a 32 percent increase – which will destroy budgets for taxpayers on fixed incomes and kill many small businesses? He is a loose cannon.
Again, why does the proposed new budget not include a pay raise for first responders? The federal money that Mayor Cooper said will provide some workers with a $3-an-hour increase is only temporary. Besides, why should the federal government be supporting a basic service that citizens pay taxes to receive?.
We should not be surprised by Mayor Cooper’s ill-advised tax increase or the heavy handedness of a shutdown that considers abortion clinics and liquor stores essential services, while shutting down many businesses that provide services people need.
All across the nation, Democrats are operating from the same playbook. High crime, high taxes, poorly performing schools, and government corruption are common in cities under Democrat control. We should resist ANY tax increase this year. If we fail in our efforts, those of us who want good government might just have to vote with our feet and move to a location governed by fiscally conservative elected officials.
– – –
Dr. Carol M. Swain is a former tenured professor at Vanderbilt and Princeton universities. Her Be the People News blog and podcast empower individuals to think independently, understand their responsibilities, and make a difference in the world. Her latest books are Debating Immigration: Second Edition (2018) and Abduction: How Liberalism Steals Our Children’s Hearts and Minds (2016).


thetennesseestar--2020-05-05--Commentary: Will Biden Be the Media’s Downfall or Salvation?

If we lived in a fair and just world , most of the current media would simply go away and try something else .
The problem is not that reporters are human and therefore sometimes err .
The rub is not even that they are poorly educated or rarely write well .
We also expect officials to leak one-sided stories and then the media to print them without edits .
These are all things baked into the media cake and the public understands , even if it does not quite accept them .
The crisis instead is that they are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrong because they are lazy and biased – and they deny it to the point of self-delusion .
The result is that , for all practical purposes , journalists no longer exist for the general public as sources of news .
More than half the country now assumes that the New York Times , Washington Post , NPR , the networks , and the cable news outlets are culpable not of merely failing to tell the truth but of being incapable of telling the truth .
Even if they wished to , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dispassionately , they simply can not , given their investments in the progressive agenda , and its investments in them .
In other words , they are owned – creatures of that agenda .
Nowhere has the media nadir been clearer than in the case of ol ’ Joe Biden from Scranton .
He may have once bragged on tape that he got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired for daring to investigate corruption that involved his own wastrel son , Hunter .
He may have had a history of racially charged condescension , ranging @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Obama ( “ I mean , you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy .
I mean , that ’ s a storybook , man ” ) to the purported predictable habits of Indian immigrants ( “ You can not go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin ’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent .
I ’ m not joking.
” ) .
He may have had a bad habit as a candidate of plagiarizing and spreading fairy stories .
No matter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on media exemption .
During the Brett Kavanaugh debacle , we were told a Supreme Court nominee should be rejected because a middle-age woman , Christine Blasey Ford , claimed that as a teenager 36 years earlier she had been assaulted by Kavanaugh .
She offered no accurate information on where and when , or even much about how , it happened .
Her memory was not just spotty , but inconsistent and contradictory .
The media not only blared that she was “ convincing ” and “ to be believed ” as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ obviously sincere , ” but that all such women in her predicament should be believed – oblivious of the corner into which they were painting themselves .
None of Ford ’ s “ witnesses ” confirmed her story .
Even her family seemed reluctant to vouch for its veracity .
But her instant fame did prompt a host of imitators to come forward with even more lurid accusations .
All were found unconvincing and some even were demonstrably lying , but many were initially reported as credible .
The media narrative concluded that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hero because she alone had dared to try to abort the appointment of a conservative Supreme Court judge , empowered by the new mantra “ women must be believed ” – as in any accusation of male impropriety is fact .
Then Nemesis landed on Joe Biden – a former loud adherent to the view that the accused has absolute credibility in such sexual harassment charges .
Biden now found himself in the role of Kavanaugh , but without the latter ’ s clear evidence of innocence .
A former aide , Tara @ @ @ @ @ @ @ detail , corroboration , and exact memory than did Blasey Ford .
Unlike Kavanaugh , Biden had a prior , sick “ handsy ” habit of serially whispering into the ears of unsuspecting women – many teens and pre-teens – sniffing and blowing in their hair , and squeezing their limbs and shoulders – and continued his creepy habits given his reliance on three-decades of media exemption .
No matter .
The media , as it had in the Kavanaugh case , and for most of Biden ’ s career , did the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to wound .
Translated : its own embarrassing double standards paled in comparison to preventing a disastrous Bernie Sanders from being the nominee , and to the object of defeating Donald Trump .
But hypocrisy was operative for the media only up to a point of practicality , not morality .
After all , it was one thing to protect the sexual harasser Joe Biden from inquiry about sexual assault and to ignore his female victims – if Biden , the nominee , could defeat Trump .
But it was quite another to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ candidate , who might ensure Trump ’ s election .
So , Nemesis was not through with Biden .
In fact , the goddess apparently had only just started .
For most of 2017 and 2018 , the media ran with the narrative that President Trump was crazy , mentally impaired , and should be removed through the invocation of the 25th Amendment .
Remember , this was the era when the voting machine farce , the attempted subversion of the Electoral College , the first impeachment vote , the Emoluments Clause gambit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not provided the promised magic bullets to mow Trump down .
Even the ongoing coup of framing Michael Flynn , rigging FISA court warrants , and launching the Andrew Weissman witch hunt under the figurehead of Robert Mueller , was not working .
Many followed the media ’ s “ Trump is nuts ” gambit .
Yale psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee came forward to insist before Congress that her new telepatient Trump was crazy .
Indeed , Dr. Lee ’ s diagnosis was that he should be removed from office as a “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unprofessional assessment since Lee had never even met Trump .
Lee was deified by the media in the way that Ford had been .
She was perhaps just as off-putting but , again , usefully so .
Thereby , the media also championed the controversial idea that Ivy League psychiatrists from afar can declare presidents demented enough to be removed , and all women who accuse politicians of sexual assault are de facto credible .
The FBI ’ s acting director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein got caught up in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as to envision an ad hoc sort of putsch by tapping Trump ’ s private conservations in hopes of proving he was non compos mentis .
In response to the hysteria , Trump stooped to take the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test .
He aced it .
But by 2019 the Democratic front-runner Joe Biden clearly was unable at times to remember where he was , who was in his midst , and what he was supposed to say and do .
Biden even more bizarrely began attacking random questioners on the campaign trail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and “ fat ” and more strangely a “ lying dog-faced pony soldier ” —a phrase even the media has not yet deciphered .
Biden boasted about beating Trump up behind the gym and well before that spun ever weirder tall tales about one “ Corn Pop ” —a supposed inner-city thug that the brave young Joe Biden had confronted , with a chain no less !
In Biden ’ s world , young African-American youth wished to stroke his golden hairy , tanned legs , and he added , “ I love @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other times , he recounted defending the honor of his sister by slamming a rude stranger ’ s face into a restaurant counter .
Biden ’ s apparent cognitive disabilities were not helped by his extended layoff due to the viral shutdown .
Instead of resting , he appeared even more lost , sending out bizarre video interviews from his basement in which he could not form coherent sentences and lost his place in teleprompted and scripted responses .
The media , as in the matters of sexual harassment , kept quiet .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Media Then suddenly the media concluded Biden really was embarrassing , not as a sexual assaulter , but as an incompetent candidate .
He was no longer the last man standing as a savior from the Bernie Sanders debacle , but himself also a liability that might wreck the Democratic party in November .
Being a media hypocrite was one thing , but being one for the sake of a losing cause was quite another .
And so finally the media began gingerly exploring Joe ’ s defenses against Reade ’ s charges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a guarded manner opposite from its earlier blanket condemnation of Kavanagh .
So far Dr. Lee has not re-emerged to call for a befuddled Biden ’ s removal in a fashion that is apparently once again unprofessional for psychiatrists to do .
No reporters have asked Biden to take the Montreal test , much less to match his score with the supposedly impaired Trump .
The walls really are closing in on a vanishing media .
We are learning now from recently released documents that almost everything the media told us about “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ investigation ” was completely wrong , and knowingly false .
Christopher Steele , before he was deified by the media , was an incompetent partisan who more or less hired himself out to Hillary Clinton , who hid her hire by three firewalls .
Steele either made up his dossier or cobbled it together from Russian disinformation sources who apparently found Steele a handy joke .
When recently asked by a British court to produce his notes and research documents , he admitted he could not .
Like his boss , Hillary Clinton @ @ @ @ @ @ @ subpoenaed emails and smashed her hard drives , or similar to the fashion in which the FBI apparently erased the text messages of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok , Steele years ago simply deleted his incriminating source “ evidence , ” even as he was later assuring the world that he had “ meticulously documented ” his phony dossier .
Was there one “ fact ” that the media reported during this entire collusion saga that proved true ?
We know now the FBI deceived FISA court judges and , in some cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ citizens .
The media had variously characterized Flynn as a nut or a traitor and printed as fact self-serving leaks from the FBI that found reporters and columnists who were , conveniently , ideologically akin to themselves and thus useful idiots .
Flynn was guilty of nothing more than seeing through the anemic anti-terrorist policies of Barack Obama and not being shy about it – a mortal sin and apparently one deserving of a set-up felony charge .
Fired former FBI director and serial prevaricator James Comey was lionized as a victim of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , we now know from released documents that Comey ignored evidence that Michael Flynn had done nothing to warrant an investigation .
Instead , he sent his agents into the White House to mislead and deceive Flynn and , in their own words , in hopes of getting him fired or indicted .
Comey ’ s Nemesis is that his vanity and greed have led him to television where his nonstop gab and braggadocio will probably help to make a prosecutor ’ s case against him .
Some of the latest revelations from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mueller ’ s dream team—the all-stars who , the media gushed , would soon make mincemeat of Trump ’ s country lawyers , in the way that Harvard-swift House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff ( D-Calif. ) would embarrass former dairy farmer Rep. Devin Nunes ( R-Calif. ) .
Mueller folded in March 2019 , but for strange reasons much of the incriminating information that he bumped into about government abuse only now has appeared .
In the end , Mueller proved the embarrassment , his legal team leaking bloviators rather than hunter-killer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s legacy was that he finally fired Lisa Page and Peter Strzok , albeit reluctantly and to the end hiding the circumstances of their embarrassing departures from the team .
Despite the media narratives , it could not hide the reality that Schiff ’ s memo was disingenuous , while Nunes ’ s was factual .
Schiff , who monitored the communications of some of his own colleagues in the House , now is fighting to prevent the release of witness testimonies that will likely show the media leaks of what they had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what they said .
In other words , the civil liberties media more or less have condoned surveilling American citizens through false warrants , FBI grandees who stage perjury ambushes , and the destruction of subpoenaed evidence .
After the Mueller implosion , the learning-nothing/forgetting-nothing media moved on to the non- “ anonymous ” whistleblower , the Vindman brothers , impeachment , the “ Trump lied and thousands died ” coronavirus , and the lockdown-forever narrative .
To understand the media coverage of the greatest economic self-inflicted wound in American history is simple @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump is cast as culpable for the spread of the epidemic by not locking down the country earlier and longer ; once the virus disappears , Trump caused the ensuing depression by locking down the country too early and far too long .
Every story until Election Day will serve those two master media themes .
After Journolist , the John Podesta email archive , the serial CNN fables , the daily White House correspondents circus , and Trump Derangement Syndrome , no one can believe the news anymore—to the extent Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are journalists in the sense that Hollywood still believes it has actors and real scripts , or China still poses as an important contributor to the international community , or the World Health Organization assumes it is a go-to global health resource , or the FBI Washington hierarchy is a protector of American freedom , or John Brennan and James Clapper are distinguished senior “ wise men , ” or Barack Obama oversaw the most scandal-free administration in history .
All these were once useful lies but now lies to such a degree @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian , columnist , former classics professor , and scholar of ancient warfare .
He was a professor of classics at California State University , Fresno , and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University ’ s Hoover Institution .
He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004 , and is the author most recently of The Second World Wars : How the First Global Conflict was Fought and Won ( Basic Books ) .

by Victor Davis Hanson
If we lived in a fair and just world, most of the current media would simply go away and try something else.
The problem is not that reporters are human and therefore sometimes err. The rub is not even that they are poorly educated or rarely write well.
We also expect officials to leak one-sided stories and then the media to print them without edits. These are all things baked into the media cake and the public understands, even if it does not quite accept them.
The crisis instead is that they are now almost always wrong, and predictably wrong because they are lazy and biased – and they deny it to the point of self-delusion. The result is that, for all practical purposes, journalists no longer exist for the general public as sources of news.
More than half the country now assumes that the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, the networks, and the cable news outlets are culpable not of merely failing to tell the truth but of being incapable of telling the truth. Even if they wished to, or had the skills to report empirically and dispassionately, they simply cannot, given their investments in the progressive agenda, and its investments in them. In other words, they are owned – creatures of that agenda.
Nowhere has the media nadir been clearer than in the case of ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton.
He may have once bragged on tape that he got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired for daring to investigate corruption that involved his own wastrel son, Hunter. He may have had a history of racially charged condescension, ranging from commentary on his future boss Barack Obama (“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man”) to the purported predictable habits of Indian immigrants (“You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”). He may have had a bad habit as a candidate of plagiarizing and spreading fairy stories.
No matter. Biden grew ever haughtier, nursed on media exemption.
During the Brett Kavanaugh debacle, we were told a Supreme Court nominee should be rejected because a middle-age woman, Christine Blasey Ford, claimed that as a teenager 36 years earlier she had been assaulted by Kavanaugh. She offered no accurate information on where and when, or even much about how, it happened. Her memory was not just spotty, but inconsistent and contradictory. The media not only blared that she was “convincing” and “to be believed” as well as “empathetic” and “obviously sincere,” but that all such women in her predicament should be believed – oblivious of the corner into which they were painting themselves.
None of Ford’s “witnesses” confirmed her story. Even her family seemed reluctant to vouch for its veracity. But her instant fame did prompt a host of imitators to come forward with even more lurid accusations. All were found unconvincing and some even were demonstrably lying, but many were initially reported as credible.
The media narrative concluded that the unbelievable Ford nonetheless was a folk hero because she alone had dared to try to abort the appointment of a conservative Supreme Court judge, empowered by the new mantra “women must be believed” – as in any accusation of male impropriety is fact.
Nemesis Meets Biden
Then Nemesis landed on Joe Biden – a former loud adherent to the view that the accused has absolute credibility in such sexual harassment charges. Biden now found himself in the role of Kavanaugh, but without the latter’s clear evidence of innocence.
A former aide, Tara Reade, came forward with far more detail, corroboration, and exact memory than did Blasey Ford. Unlike Kavanaugh, Biden had a prior, sick “handsy” habit of serially whispering into the ears of unsuspecting women – many teens and pre-teens – sniffing and blowing in their hair, and squeezing their limbs and shoulders – and continued his creepy habits given his reliance on three-decades of media exemption.
No matter. The media, as it had in the Kavanaugh case, and for most of Biden’s career, did the political calculus and found Biden too viable to wound. Translated: its own embarrassing double standards paled in comparison to preventing a disastrous Bernie Sanders from being the nominee, and to the object of defeating Donald Trump.
But hypocrisy was operative for the media only up to a point of practicality, not morality. After all, it was one thing to protect the sexual harasser Joe Biden from inquiry about sexual assault and to ignore his female victims – if Biden, the nominee, could defeat Trump. But it was quite another to shield Joe Biden, an increasingly enfeebled candidate, who might ensure Trump’s election.
So, Nemesis was not through with Biden. In fact, the goddess apparently had only just started.
For most of 2017 and 2018, the media ran with the narrative that President Trump was crazy, mentally impaired, and should be removed through the invocation of the 25th Amendment. Remember, this was the era when the voting machine farce, the attempted subversion of the Electoral College, the first impeachment vote, the Emoluments Clause gambit, Stormy, and Michael Cohen had not provided the promised magic bullets to mow Trump down. Even the ongoing coup of framing Michael Flynn, rigging FISA court warrants, and launching the Andrew Weissman witch hunt under the figurehead of Robert Mueller, was not working.
Many followed the media’s “Trump is nuts” gambit. Yale psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee came forward to insist before Congress that her new telepatient Trump was crazy. Indeed, Dr. Lee’s diagnosis was that he should be removed from office as a “danger to the species”—a remarkably unprofessional assessment since Lee had never even met Trump.
Lee was deified by the media in the way that Ford had been. She was perhaps just as off-putting but, again, usefully so. Thereby, the media also championed the controversial idea that Ivy League psychiatrists from afar can declare presidents demented enough to be removed, and all women who accuse politicians of sexual assault are de facto credible.
The FBI’s acting director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein got caught up in the media frenzy and went so far as to envision an ad hoc sort of putsch by tapping Trump’s private conservations in hopes of proving he was non compos mentis. In response to the hysteria, Trump stooped to take the Montreal Cognitive Assessment test. He aced it.
But by 2019 the Democratic front-runner Joe Biden clearly was unable at times to remember where he was, who was in his midst, and what he was supposed to say and do. Biden even more bizarrely began attacking random questioners on the campaign trail, calling them a “liar” and “fat” and more strangely a “lying dog-faced pony soldier”—a phrase even the media has not yet deciphered.
Biden boasted about beating Trump up behind the gym and well before that spun ever weirder tall tales about one “Corn Pop”—a supposed inner-city thug that the brave young Joe Biden had confronted, with a chain no less! In Biden’s world, young African-American youth wished to stroke his golden hairy, tanned legs, and he added, “I love kids jumping on my lap.” At other times, he recounted defending the honor of his sister by slamming a rude stranger’s face into a restaurant counter.
Biden’s apparent cognitive disabilities were not helped by his extended layoff due to the viral shutdown. Instead of resting, he appeared even more lost, sending out bizarre video interviews from his basement in which he could not form coherent sentences and lost his place in teleprompted and scripted responses. The media, as in the matters of sexual harassment, kept quiet.
The Walls Are Closing In On the Media
Then suddenly the media concluded Biden really was embarrassing, not as a sexual assaulter, but as an incompetent candidate. He was no longer the last man standing as a savior from the Bernie Sanders debacle, but himself also a liability that might wreck the Democratic party in November.
Being a media hypocrite was one thing, but being one for the sake of a losing cause was quite another. And so finally the media began gingerly exploring Joe’s defenses against Reade’s charges of a long-ago sexual assault – in a guarded manner opposite from its earlier blanket condemnation of Kavanagh.
So far Dr. Lee has not re-emerged to call for a befuddled Biden’s removal in a fashion that is apparently once again unprofessional for psychiatrists to do. No reporters have asked Biden to take the Montreal test, much less to match his score with the supposedly impaired Trump.
The walls really are closing in on a vanishing media. We are learning now from recently released documents that almost everything the media told us about “Russian collusion” and “the Mueller investigation” was completely wrong, and knowingly false.
Christopher Steele, before he was deified by the media, was an incompetent partisan who more or less hired himself out to Hillary Clinton, who hid her hire by three firewalls. Steele either made up his dossier or cobbled it together from Russian disinformation sources who apparently found Steele a handy joke.
When recently asked by a British court to produce his notes and research documents, he admitted he could not. Like his boss, Hillary Clinton, who “bleached” away her subpoenaed emails and smashed her hard drives, or similar to the fashion in which the FBI apparently erased the text messages of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, Steele years ago simply deleted his incriminating source “evidence,” even as he was later assuring the world that he had “meticulously documented” his phony dossier.
Was there one “fact” that the media reported during this entire collusion saga that proved true? We know now the FBI deceived FISA court judges and, in some cases, doctored written evidence to surveil U.S. citizens.
The media had variously characterized Flynn as a nut or a traitor and printed as fact self-serving leaks from the FBI that found reporters and columnists who were, conveniently, ideologically akin to themselves and thus useful idiots. Flynn was guilty of nothing more than seeing through the anemic anti-terrorist policies of Barack Obama and not being shy about it – a mortal sin and apparently one deserving of a set-up felony charge.
Fired former FBI director and serial prevaricator James Comey was lionized as a victim of Trump’s tantrums. In truth, we now know from released documents that Comey ignored evidence that Michael Flynn had done nothing to warrant an investigation. Instead, he sent his agents into the White House to mislead and deceive Flynn and, in their own words, in hopes of getting him fired or indicted. Comey’s Nemesis is that his vanity and greed have led him to television where his nonstop gab and braggadocio will probably help to make a prosecutor’s case against him.
Some of the latest revelations from newly released documents were known to Robert Mueller’s dream team—the all-stars who, the media gushed, would soon make mincemeat of Trump’s country lawyers, in the way that Harvard-swift House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) would embarrass former dairy farmer Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). Mueller folded in March 2019, but for strange reasons much of the incriminating information that he bumped into about government abuse only now has appeared.
In the end, Mueller proved the embarrassment, his legal team leaking bloviators rather than hunter-killer team lawyers as advertised. Mueller’s legacy was that he finally fired Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, albeit reluctantly and to the end hiding the circumstances of their embarrassing departures from the team.
Despite the media narratives, it could not hide the reality that Schiff’s memo was disingenuous, while Nunes’s was factual. Schiff, who monitored the communications of some of his own colleagues in the House, now is fighting to prevent the release of witness testimonies that will likely show the media leaks of what they had said are not, in fact, what they said. In other words, the civil liberties media more or less have condoned surveilling American citizens through false warrants, FBI grandees who stage perjury ambushes, and the destruction of subpoenaed evidence.
The Learn-Nothing and Forget-Nothing Media
After the Mueller implosion, the learning-nothing/forgetting-nothing media moved on to the non-“anonymous” whistleblower, the Vindman brothers, impeachment, the “Trump lied and thousands died” coronavirus, and the lockdown-forever narrative.
To understand the media coverage of the greatest economic self-inflicted wound in American history is simple: as long the virus remains active, Trump is cast as culpable for the spread of the epidemic by not locking down the country earlier and longer; once the virus disappears, Trump caused the ensuing depression by locking down the country too early and far too long.
Every story until Election Day will serve those two master media themes. After Journolist, the John Podesta email archive, the serial CNN fables, the daily White House correspondents circus, and Trump Derangement Syndrome, no one can believe the news anymore—to the extent Americans still read and watch it.
Reporters are journalists in the sense that Hollywood still believes it has actors and real scripts, or China still poses as an important contributor to the international community, or the World Health Organization assumes it is a go-to global health resource, or the FBI Washington hierarchy is a protector of American freedom, or John Brennan and James Clapper are distinguished senior “wise men,” or Barack Obama oversaw the most scandal-free administration in history.
All these were once useful lies but now lies to such a degree that they have even lost their usefulness.
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Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He was a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict was Fought and Won (Basic Books).


thetennesseestar--2020-05-05--‘You Truly Deserve It’: Trump Endorses Ilhan Omar’s GOP Challenger

President Donald Trump on Monday endorsed Lacy Johnson , a GOP congressional candidate running to unseat Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar .
“ And I ’ m Endorsing you also Lacy , you truly deserve it .
You are doing a great job , and Omar is a disaster who wants much higher taxes , hates our Military & our Vets , demands Open Borders , and is fighting to take away our great 2nd Amendment , ” Trump tweeted on Monday .
“ Good luck Lacy !
” the president added .
The tweet was in response to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Johnson said Saturday : “ I ’ m running against Ilhan Omar .
I ’ m humbled the GOP endorsed me by receiving 90 % of the vote .
I will win the primary and look forward to defeating Ilhan in Nov. 2020.
” Johnson is one of several Republicans in Minnesota ’ s 5th Congressional District vying to take on Omar .
The first-term lawmaker has rocketed to the national scene as a member of the so-called “ squad ” and over her sharp criticisms of Trump and ongoing accusations that she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A successful African-American businessman who has lived in North Minneapolis for more than four decades , Johnson believes he can unseat Omar — despite the district ’ s deep blue lean .
The lifelong Minnesota resident is relying on his deep ties to the district , fiscal conservatism , and closing the achievement gap for students of color , according to the Star Tribune .
“ We all know if you put an ‘ R ’ in front of anyone ’ s name in this district , it ’ s tough , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climb for this election .
“ I could be running against Popeye and if Popeye had a ‘ D ’ behind his name , I ’ m in trouble.
” But first Johnson must win in the election ’ s crowded GOP primary , which includes former White House correspondent Dalia Al-Aqidi and other candidates .
Trump ’ s endorsement of Johnson will likely give him strong momentum as he heads into the congressional primary elections , which will take place on August 11 .
The winner will then take on Omar in @ @ @ @ @ @ @

by Jason Hopkins
President Donald Trump on Monday endorsed Lacy Johnson, a GOP congressional candidate running to unseat Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.
“And I’m Endorsing you also Lacy, you truly deserve it. You are doing a great job, and Omar is a disaster who wants much higher taxes, hates our Military & our Vets, demands Open Borders, and is fighting to take away our great 2nd Amendment,” Trump tweeted on Monday.
“Good luck Lacy!” the president added. The tweet was in response to a recent ad by the congressional candidate.
Johnson said Saturday: “I’m running against Ilhan Omar. I’m humbled the GOP endorsed me by receiving 90% of the vote. I will win the primary and look forward to defeating Ilhan in Nov. 2020.”
Johnson is one of several Republicans in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District vying to take on Omar. The first-term lawmaker has rocketed to the national scene as a member of the so-called “squad” and over her sharp criticisms of Trump and ongoing accusations that she married her brother to circumvent immigration laws.
I'm running against Ilhan Omar. I'm humbled the GOP endorsed me by receiving 90% of the vote I will win the primary and look forward to defeating Ilhan in Nov. 2020. Please retweet, follow me, and if able, please contribute to my campaign at link below. https://t.co/yQgy7q1saD pic.twitter.com/PlKWrbw0Ug — Lacy Johnson (@LacyJohnsonMN) May 2, 2020
A successful African-American businessman who has lived in North Minneapolis for more than four decades, Johnson believes he can unseat Omar — despite the district’s deep blue lean. The lifelong Minnesota resident is relying on his deep ties to the district, fiscal conservatism, and closing the achievement gap for students of color, according to the Star Tribune.
“We all know if you put an ‘R’ in front of anyone’s name in this district, it’s tough,” he recently said about the uphill climb for this election. “I could be running against Popeye and if Popeye had a ‘D’ behind his name, I’m in trouble.”
But first Johnson must win in the election’s crowded GOP primary, which includes former White House correspondent Dalia Al-Aqidi and other candidates.
Trump’s endorsement of Johnson will likely give him strong momentum as he heads into the congressional primary elections, which will take place on August 11. The winner will then take on Omar in the general election on November 3.
– – –
Jason Hopkins is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.