It's that time of year again. Time to dust off your surgical masks, practice social distancing, and fear the return of COVID-19.

"The Return of COVID" sounds like a horror movie. In fact, it's a comedy. We've been down this road before, and for the overwhelming majority of Americans masks aren't necessary for protection against COVID (or any other respiratory disease for that matter. Bird Flu, anyone?).

Having said that, if you're like me — 70 years old, heart disease, diabetes, COPD — whatever small difference masks and vaccines made in keeping me alive, I gladly took it.

A new study has been published in the prestigious "Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Health Forum" that purports to show that anywhere from 118,000 to 248,000 more lives could have been saved if we only followed the lead of states like Massachusetts and created strict mask mandates and vaccine requirements.

I have no doubt that if all older people, people with so-called "co-morbidities" like heart disease and diabetes, and immuno-compromised people had masked up and gotten vaccinated, lives could have been saved. How many is impossible to say.

Pulling numbers out of thin air and wagging a finger at states with less strict mandates is ludicrous. 

“These study findings do not support the views of those opposing COVID-19 restrictions who erroneously believe the restrictions did not work,” University of Virginia public policy and economics professor Christopher J Ruhm writes. “To the contrary, the package of policies implemented by some states probably saved many lives.”

"Probably saved many lives" or, just as probably, the masking and vaccines saved some lives. The study made a minimal effort to weigh the costs of lives saved versus the social cost of closing the economy, schools, and mandating a vaccine. 

The Hill:

The findings emphasized that not all interventions were equally helpful; particularly when it came to closures of public spaces, the costs may have outweighed benefits. As much as three-fourths of the lives saved by restrictions could be attributed to just two practices — masks and vaccines.

By contrast, the researchers found, benefits were weakest for school closures, which hurt students’ social development and test scores without achieving much benefit in reducing the death rate.

For high-poverty school districts, this disparity was particularly stark. A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that low-income districts that went remote in the 2020-21 school year, for example, “will need to spend nearly all of their federal aid on academic recovery to help students recover from pandemic-related achievement losses.

The study acknowledged that simply saving lives was “not necessarily sufficient to justify imposing restrictions because they also imposed a variety of costs.” They grudgingly noted that the "loss of liberty" was difficult to quantify.

“If all states had imposed restrictions similar to those used in the 10 most restrictive states, excess deaths would have been an estimated 10% to 21% lower than the 1.18 million that actually occurred during the 2-year analysis period,” according to the study.

I call BS on that, as do a lot of other people.

They already admitted the social distances and mask use were not only made up on the spot, but clinically proven ineffective

You can't gas light us... we have the internet

— Real Rationalist (@aBESTway) July 26, 2024

Lest we forget...

“It worked for China.”
I don’t hat journalists enough.

— David Carter (@MrDavidCarter) July 26, 2024

So, the closing and enforcing of those closures, of small businesses and schools and the keeping of the public away from itself, wasn't strict enough??! https://t.co/K9SVEMKlnQ

— Sonja Sharp (@sonjarenasharp) July 26, 2024

Twitchy:

There is no way -- none whatsoever -- that any study or scientist or doctor could know what might have happened in the past.

So when the media try to retcon us into thinking that if we has just locked down even harder during COVID, we would've saved more lives.

There are so many variables in this, it's impossible to know how things would have played out. Especially now that we know masking and the vaccine were wholly ineffective.

Not "wholly ineffective," but certainly less effective than advertised.