
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton NJ, State Senator Joe Pennacchio released his review of the administration’s report of the Covid pandemic and the State’s response. The report commissioned by Governor Murphy was compiled by the Law Firm of Montgomery McCracken at a cost of $9 million to the State’s taxpayers.
“Unfortunately, for the taxpayers,” Pennacchio stated “even with its large girth of more than 900 pages, the cost of the report was not justified by its content.”
“It is obvious to me that the report tried to do with size what it should have done with substance. With a history of the Covid outbreak and the report’s footnotes, both take up a considerable portion of the 900 plus page exercise. All in the report cost taxpayers more than $10,000 per page,” said the Senator.
“A disservice was done to the people of New Jersey by not assigning blame for some of New Jersey’s failed Covid policies. Most if any of the criticism was directed at the administration of the Menlo Park and Paramus Veterans’ nursing facilities. This no doubt could not be escaped because of two scathing reports on Covid policies and deaths in Veterans’ nursing homes done by the U.S. Department of Justice and the State’s Commission of Investigations,” said Senator Pennacchio.
Four years ago this week, the government implemented unprecedented federal lockdowns of the economy to combat Covid-19. A recently published comprehensive study conducted by CTUP, analyzing academic evidence and dozens of peer-reviewed studies, concludes that the mandated shutdown of schools, churches, and businesses yielded minimal health benefits while imposing significant long-term societal costs, estimated in the trillions of dollars.
These costs include a staggering $6 trillion increase in government debt, the closure of hundreds of thousands of businesses, the loss of one to two years of schooling for young children, widespread unemployment affecting tens of millions of Americans, and hundreds of thousands of excess deaths attributed to issues such as loneliness, depression, alcoholism, and drug abuse exacerbated by forced social isolation. Additionally, delayed hospital care due to the pandemic’s impact on healthcare systems has contributed to the loss of lives.
The educational setbacks experienced by children are projected to result in lower wages for workers in the future, potentially amounting to trillions of dollars in economic losses over the coming decades.
Remarkably, the cumulative societal costs far outweigh any discernible health benefits derived from the mandates and lockdowns. States that opted not to implement lockdown measures or swiftly reopened experienced similar death rates on average compared to states that enforced prolonged lockdowns. However, non-lockdown states demonstrated much swifter economic recoveries than those that remained shuttered for extended periods.
https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/COVID-Lessons-Learned_Final.pdf
What about washing your hands. And covering your mouth when you sneeze.or cough.