COVID mandates – Letters Of Liberty

**“COVID mandates,” Monterey Herald – August 1, 2023**

It appears to me that government succeeds by failing. A very good example of this principle was the COVID-19 mandates. According to this year’s March 23 edition of The Lancet, one of the most prominent peer-reviewed medical publications, “Mandate propensity (a summary measure that captures a state’s use of physical distancing and mask mandates) was associated with a statistically significant and meaningful large reduction in the cumulative infection rate, but not the cumulative death rate.” In other words, physical distancing and mask mandates had no real impact on COVID-19 deaths. Other medical studies have reached the same conclusion.

Considering all of the disastrous social, psychological, and economic side effects of these mandates, you would think that some of the leading government medical experts would have voiced this possibility long ago. But then again, it appears that failing can provide a never-ending flood of money in attempts to attain the unattainable.

— Sharon Field, Salinas