Mayor <redacted>, Council members –

I read with interest about your request for the imposition of a curfew and the councils partial support.
Can you please elucidate what justification there is for such a move? Is there any scientific basis,
studies, published literature, that shows that a curfew with seemingly arbitrary hours has any
effect what-so-ever on airborne respiratory virus transmission? Note a ‘plausible’ mechanistic
hypothesis put forward by yourself or an appointed bureaucratic ‘expert’ does not constitute evidence.
That’s not how science works, it requires observation and data that demonstrate effect in a
statistically significant manner.

I’ll note that our record on effective responses does not give one confidence in the value of
this edict. Gov. <redacted> allowed municipalities to impose mask mandates in June and <redacted>
and <redacted> County rapidly put such mandates in place. There is no evidence of any effect on
SARS Cov-2 spread or impacts; certainly didn’t stop the current putative ‘spike’ in <redacted>.
Indeed, there is no evidence of any correlation between mask mandates and any positive effect
on the transmission or disease impact anywhere across the US down to the county level,
or in Europe or Asia. Empirically, masks don’t work. That’s not surprising since the actual
science has been pretty unequivocal on their lack of impact – see e.g. Xiao et. al. (2020)
for  a meta-analysis of available RCTs and epidemiological studies. Every actual scientific test
conducted in the last 40 years has demonstrated no statistically significant positive effect of
masks in preventing the transmission of airborne respiratory viruses. A case of ineffective
“do-something” for appearances sake with no benefit, but great cost – how is your curfew
any different?

The same can be said for lock downs. There is no correlation of the imposition of lock downs
with any positive effect on transmission or impact of SARS Cov-2, nationally or internationally.
See e.g. Chaudhry et. al. 2020, or Meunier 2020, or additionally peruse PANDA and specifically this PDF
(not peer reviewed but high quality data analysis). The WHO itself, of which I assure you I am
not a big fan, recommends against lock downs as a useful measure against respiratory viruses (e.g.
ISBN 978-92-4-151683-9, 2019, Table 1 Not recommended in any circumstances: Quarantine of exposed
individuals,….,Internal travel restrictions”, and have more recently recommended against lock downs
in the current situation based on an understanding of the significant costs in life and health
that will far exceed the damages caused by the actual virus). The lock down strategy has been
demonstrably ineffective in preventing harms from SARS Cov-2 spread while imposing very
large costs in human life and well being. Yet here we are – another case of ineffective
“do-something” for appearances sake with no benefit but great cost – how is your curfew any
different?

I suppose you’ve not read this far, but one further note on the current irrational, hysterical
drive to impose additional restrictions on the citizens of <redacted>. What is driving it?
The rise in cases? The current case hysteria is unwarranted – we’ve never done such aggressive
testing on a healthy population during the normal yearly respiratory infection season,
using a testing method that was never designed or intended to be diagnostic and is being
run at such a high cycle threshold so as to produce meaningless results with respect to actually
tracing individuals at risk from Covid-19. Reporting and relying on case counts in the current
testing environment is useless and only provides a means for politicians and media to foment fear
and generate eyeballs on pages and screens. Perhaps we’re concerned about impacts, e.g. hospitalization
and deaths? These, like the positive cases, require context. How stressed are hospitals during normal
respiratory infection seasons? Generally speaking hospital ICUs are running at 80% (and can expand
quite quickly if need be) capacity during a normal year in the respiratory viral season – it makes little
sense to build out capacity that will not be used. So is the current capacity usage really significantly
above normal usage in the fall and winter months? The same relates to deaths. There is a significant
rise in deaths from various respiratory infections and pneumonias in the fall and winter every
year. We just don’t normally hear about it since we are not normally hyper-focused on a single
virus and inundated with excessive, counter-productive testing. Is there excess mortality
in the current respiratory season, i.e. if we were to look at all cause mortality or
mortality from respiratory infectious diseases, including Covid-19, during the current year
to the average of the last 5-10 years, is there a significant difference? This is the
sort of context that is needed right now from both the media and our leaders. Not irrational
fear mongering and ineffective, un-justified, governmental edicts that are an anathema
in a free society.

Sincerely

<redacted>