Bookpleasures welcomes as our guest Hugh McTavish author of Covid Lockdown Insanity.

Hugh is a Ph.D. biochemistand immunologist and a patent attorney. He has authored 18 refereedscientific journal articles and is the inventor of 21 U.S. patents.He has also written two prior books on public policy and nature. Hehas started two pharmaceutical companies off his own inventions.

Good day Hugh and thanksfor taking part in our interview.

Norm: What do you wishthat people had understood at the beginning of the coronaviruspandemic?

Hugh: That COVID wasabout twice as deadly as the flu, if you have not been vaccinatedagainst either disease. So however afraid you were of dying from theflu in 2019 if you caught it, multiply that by 2 and that is howafraid you should be of dying from COVID if you catch it. For mostof us, we have zero fear of dying from the flu, so two times zero isstill zero.

Norm: What is youroverall opinion on the concept of a lockdown and how do you think itshould be modified in the USA?

Hugh: The lockdowns werean unmitigated disaster. The net effect has been to kill peoplebecause the lockdown policies will wind up causing about 100,000additional deaths, mostly deaths of despair in young people—increasedsuicides and drug overdose deaths—as well as increased cancer andheart disease deaths.

We deliberately threw 16%of the workforce out of their jobs, which we know causes a largeincrease in suicides and deaths of despair. And worse, wedeliberately isolated people from one another—that was the entirepoint of the lockdowns—and since we are a social species thatpredicably caused an explosion of depression and unhappiness—thepercentage of the U.S. population in major clinical depression morethan tripled from 8.5% to 27.8% of the population—which alsopredicably leads to deaths of despair. So we effectively decided tokill young people to try to save old people. It was completelyimmoral and insane.

You do not even have toget into a debate of how much loss of freedom or how much economicloss or even how much increased clinical depression and unhappinessis it worth to save one person, on average an 84-year-old in anursing home, from COVID death.

The lockdowns caused moreloss of life than they saved. They probably killed more people thanthey saved, but because the people we decided to kill by driving themto suicides and drug overdose deaths were far younger with far moretime of life left than the people we were trying to save bypreventing their death from COVID, it is a certainty that thelockdowns caused more person-years of life lost from the people theykilled than the person-years of life saved from the people theysaved.

What we should have doneis nothing mandatory at all: No stay at home orders, no closing ofschools, no closing of restaurants and bars, much less health clubs,churches, and state and national parks, no mask mandates.

We should have educatedpeople that COVID, just like colds and flu, is spread mostly orperhaps entirely by getting the virus on your hands and then touchingyour mouth, nose, or eyes. So wash your hands and use hand sanitizerand try not to touch your face. Beyond that, live your life asusual.

Norm: Do you believethat politics played a role in the handling of COVID in the USA?

Hugh: I don’t know. Itshould not have. But for some reason this has become yet anotherreason to divide us from one another. It actually seems to me thatdividing us from one another and blaming one another for COVID mayhave been the intent.

Norm: Is there anypolicy that you believe should have been implemented initially aroundthe world or specifically in the USA?

Hugh: No, I do not thinkany mandatory policies should have been implemented anywhere in theworld, because all the evidence indicates that all the mandatorypolicies even taken together—school closings, stay-at-home orders,mask mandates, etc.—have had no effect on COVID deaths at all.

The one major country thatdid none of that, Sweden, has fewer COVID deaths per capita than theU.S., U.K., France, Italy, Spain, and most of the other majorcountries in the world that all implemented lockdowns.

Among U.S. states, thereis no correlation of COVID deaths per capita with strength oflockdowns and no correlation with Republican or Democratic governors.

Norm: What motivatedyou to write Covid Lockdown Insanity?

Hugh: I was just mystifiedand outraged at the near universal rush to lockdowns at the beginningof this. And I was thrown into depression by the lockdowns and theclosing of my church and health club and lost social interaction.

So I was standing up formyself, but also standing up for everyone else who was kicked out ofschool, thrown into depression, had their business destroyed or theirjobs taken away, driven to suicide and drug and alcohol abuse, andgenerally treated like their lives don’t matter. And then whenthey objected to their treatment, they were shouted down that theywere selfish. I was and am outraged for them.

Norm: Whatwere your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feelyou achieved them?  

Hugh: My goal was to getthese facts out about the massive increase in depression and largeincrease in deaths of despair that by any measure outweigh thebenefits of the lockdowns. My goal was to create some debate aboutthe wisdom of the lockdown policies, which we really have not had.

I have not achieved themas well as I would like. This is largely because of press and techplatform censorship. My organization COVID-Sanity.org tried to placeadvertisements in major newspapers and with Google and Facebook thatmerely said these facts about how many deaths of despair thelockdowns were causing and how many people were thrown intodepression by the lockdowns.

None of them would evenaccept our money to run those ads. We were completely censored fromeven presenting CDC statistics about those things. Amazon will notallow us to advertise this book.

Norm: Whatwas the most difficult part of writing this book?  

Hugh: I actually enjoyedwriting it very much. There really was not a difficult part towriting it, except maybe learning the rules on commas and hyphenationbetter.

Norm: How much researchdid you do before writing the book?

Hugh: I did a ton ofresearch. It was mostly while writing the book, rather than beforewriting it. I cite almost entirely CDC numbers and refereedscientific journal articles, usually the most prestigious medicaljournals, for all the numbers and facts in my book.

Norm: Whomdo you believe will benefit from your book and why?  

Hugh: Anyone with an openmind about public policy, including I suppose especially people whocurrently support the lockdowns and think this response was necessaryor beneficial.

I do not think you cancontinue to hold that belief after you read my book. Also people whohave an inclination or a certainty that the lockdown response toCOVID was a mistake and harmed them personally. My book shows youare right that this was a mistake and you are far from alone in beingharmed by the lockdowns.

Norm: Whatchallenges or obstacles did you encounter while writing your book?How did you overcome these challenges? 

Hugh: Really just thecensorship, as I mentioned above. I have overcome that by doing anumber of radio and podcast interviews and trying to startpublicizing this on social media, although I previously did not usesocial media at all and I am generally not a fan of it.

Norm: Where can ourreaders find out more about you and Covid Lockdown Insanity?

Hugh: You can buy thebook an Amazon and Barnes and Noble online or in the store or in anylocal bookstore. But it is also available for free on my websiteHughMcTavish.com. Also I blog there, mostly about COVID and thelockdowns so far, but soon it will be about other concerns.

Norm: What is next forHugh McTavish?

Hugh: I am considering arun for Minnesota Governor this year. I also want to implement andpublicize an idea I have that I call Jury Democracy.

Norm: As this interviewcomes to an end, is there anything else you'd liketo share with us?

Hugh: Thank you forhaving me. And to those who were kicked out of school, kicked out oftheir churches and synagogues, lost their jobs or businesses orincome, and thrown into depression because of the social isolation, Isay your life matters. You were wronged. Your life matters as muchas anyone else’s.

Norm: Thanks once againand good luck with Covid Lockdown Insanity.