By Ira Katz

November 16, 2020 - To lockdown a nation to prevent the spread of an infectious disease is a medical intervention never tried in the history of the world before 2020, and then almost immediately employed throughout most of the world. This observation alone is worth in-depth consideration. Here I will make the case that, considered as a medical intervention, lockdowns are immoral, illegal and ineffective.

The immorality of the lockdowns is evident from many perspectives (such as the non-aggression principle of libertarians). Here I will focus on the Ten Points of the Nuremberg Code for medical ethics developed in the wake of Nazi crimes during WWII.

This list is in terms of a medical experiment, but as implied above we are all guinea pigs now.

1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.
   
   
2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.
   
   
3. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.
   
   
4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.
   
   
5. No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.
   
   
6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.
   
   
7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability or death.
   
   
8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.
   
   
9. During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.
   
   
10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability or death to the experimental subject.

Clearly, the most obvious and important violation of lockdowns is of point 1 and the related point 9. Lockdowns are applied without consent and nobody is allowed to opt out. Point 2 is also violated. More fruitful approaches are available as explained in the Great Barrington Declaration. Point 3 is not directly applicable, but does highlight the fact that our rulers are flying blind with no animal or human pilot results to guide them. The repugnant nature in which the lockdowns have been applied often are aimed to create physical and mental suffering and injury (for example, fear is always induced), violating point 4. Point 6 is also important to emphasize. What is the real importance of this problem? To me the fabrications and frauds of the COVID story were evident in the World Health Organization declaration of the “pandemic” in March. The comparison of the infection fatality rate between Chinese hospitalized patients for COVID and the general population for flu was pure fraud. It is clear that epidemiologists who have concocted this intervention have not done anything to quantify the negative effects, thus  violating point 7.

Lord Sumption’s (the former supreme court justice) dissection of government illegality in the (Fascist United Kingdom) is a model of how governments have been acting. Furthermore,  it does not take a lawyer or health professional to note the violations of the Bill of Rights in the (Fascist Police States of Amerika).

Herein I will emphasize the more focused legal norms of the medical community. The fundamental basis of regulatory affairs is to assure, based on evidence from in vitro, ex vivo, in vivo preclinical and clinical testing that all medical interventions (pharmaceuticals, devices, procedures) are both effective and safe. The gold standard of evidence is the controlled, randomized clinical trial (CRCT). Furthermore, this testing should be assessed for all groups affected; men and women, different age groups, and different race and ethnic groups. The lack of CRCTs for other COVID related interventions has been the common critique of the medical community against, for example, hydroxychloroquine. My key point is that no CRCT has been performed to assess the efficacy or safety of national lockdowns. The fact that such a trial is even difficult to imagine makes the case stronger not to apply this blunt instrument.

There is no CRCT to prove the effectiveness of national lockdowns. Nonetheless, we do have data on the experience of the different countries (and FPSA states) that have employed lockdowns, with the important case of Sweden as a control. Getting all the data (which is always suspect today) into a form for easy comparison is an enormous task that government officials refuse to perform. Tom Woods has been collecting graphs from Internet sources that should be required viewing by all citizens for their own well being. Not only did lockdowns not reduce the first wave in Europe, they have set us up for the second wave.

I am sure most readers will have already noted that a similar analysis can be applied to other COVID responses, such as mask mandates and vaccinations.

Ira Katz lives in Paris and works as a research engineer for a French company. He is the co-author of Handling Mr. Hyde: Questions and Answers about Manic Depression and Introduction to Fluid Mechanics.