Will these crowds reveal the deadliness of the COVID-19 disease? (John Smierciak/Chicago Tribune Media Group)

The black lives matter protests in which caution and social distancing were thrown to the winds. The Trump rally in Tulsa inside a convention hall. And the three-day Republican convention in Jacksonville at which Trump will give his acceptance speech.

The people in attendance might not consider themselves to be part of the largest, most systematic experiment yet to accurately show just how deadly COVID-19 is. But guinea pigs they are.

Thanks to them, no longer will we have to rely on the widely inaccurate calculations of “experts” who by their own admission don’t have enough data to make accurate projections of the death rate.

Now they’ll have thousands and thousands of cases of people who have violated the social distancing, mask-wearing and lockdown restrictions. Will there be a huge jump in coronavirus deaths in the weeks following these events?

If so, the experts’ dire warnings will be confirmed. If not, we’ll finally have the evidence needed to free us from the crippling lockdown and other restrictions that the experts insisted were necessary.

Of course, more cases of this highly infectious disease will show up following these events. But that’s not the most important measurement. Hospitalizations also will increase, but, again, that’s not the most important measurement. To effectively calculate how deadly the virus, we need to have an exact count of people who have actually died, sad to say. And as callous as it sounds.

My own guess is that the most dire predictions overstated the danger and that the death rate will be comparable to other infectious diseases that did not require a nation-wide lockdown. And that a more targeted approach that focuses more on nursing homes and people who have serious medical problems would have been more productive. And that the lockdown turned out to be unduly burdensome on and their economy.

It’s sad that we have to count the deaths of people to come to a more accurate telling of risks. As callous as it sounds. But so far the lockdown policies that have generated so much pain and their own deaths might not have been justified, not with the “science” that we’ve been required to follow without question.

As I’ve said before, there’s good science, incorrect science. bad science and politicized science. Blindly “following the science” does a disservice to science itself and to our health and welfare.

We’ll soon find out.

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www.dennisbyrne.net 

My historical novel: Madness: The War of 1812

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