Ron Paul: What if lockdown was a big mistake?

Ron Paul at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Gage Skidmore / Flickr)

Known for his contrarian libertarian views, former Republican congressman Ron Paul is wondering aloud in his weekly column if the total lockdown strategy employed to combat the novel coronavirus pandemic was a "big mistake."

Arguing the latest government numbers indicate the death toll for the coronavirus is less than the seasonal flu outbreak of 2017-2018, Paul asked on his Ron Paul Institute website, "What if the 'cure' is worse than the disease?"

He noted the skyrocketing unemployment rate, the highest since the Great Depression, that has put many in breadlines. And then there was the U.N. secretary general's warning of a global recession that could cause "hundreds of thousands of additional child deaths per year."

"Many Americans have also died this past month because they were not able to get the medical care they needed. Cancer treatments have been indefinitely postponed," he said. "Life-saving surgeries have been put off to make room for coronavirus cases. Meanwhile hospitals are laying off thousands because the expected coronavirus cases have not come and the hospitals are partially empty."

Paul argued that Sweden did not "place the population under house arrest," and its death rate is lower than in many lockdown countries.

"Likewise, U.S. states that did not arrest citizens for merely walking on the beach are not doing worse than those that did," he wrote.

He quoted Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem saying her state has been able "to keep our businesses open and allow people to take on some personal responsibility."

South Dakota has recorded a total of seven coronavirus deaths. Kentucky, however, a strict lockdown state that is five times more populated than South Dakota, has recorded 20 times more coronavirus deaths.

"If lockdown and house arrest are the answer, shouldn’t those numbers be reversed, with South Dakota seeing mass death while Kentucky dodges the coronavirus bullet?" he asked.

Paul also pointed to the drastically reduced estimates of the models used by the White House and others. The estimate of 2.2 million coronavirus deaths in the United States that prompted the lockdowns has now been reduced to 60,000.

"That is certainly terrible, but it’s just a high-average flu season," Paul argued.

"Imagine if we had used even a fraction of the resources spent to lock down the entire population and focused on providing assistance and protection to the most vulnerable – the elderly and those with serious medical conditions," he wrote.

"We could have protected these people and still had an economy to go back to when the virus had run its course. And it wouldn’t have cost us six trillion dollars either."

Paul concluded that governments have no authority to decide what kind of business or other activity is "essential."

"Only in totalitarian states does the government claim this authority," he said. "We should encourage all those who are standing up peacefully and demanding an accounting from their elected leaders. They should not be able to get away with this."