Graph by epidemiologist Dr. Andrew Bostom basis State of Rhode Island data

At her press conference currently ongoing, Governor Gina Raimondo is announcing new restrictions on state residents, including reduction from fifteen to ten at social gatherings; no spectators at any sports for next two weeks; and fines, including fines on households, saying she doesn’t want cases to “explode”.

You’d reasonably conclude from these serious measures and language that Rhode Island’s case positivity rate, the newest panic-promoting selling point of the lockdown, was at a recent high, wouldn’t you?  In fact, as epidemiologist Dr. Andrew Bostom said yesterday on the R.I. Center for Freedom and Prosperity‘s “Mikes with Mics” and shows in his graph, above, the current, very modest rise in case positivity is actually lower than the modest rise of August 1.  Yet there were no additional restrictions at that time.

Let’s look at the graph again.  We can see that Rhode Island’s COVID-19 case positivity high was back on May 2.  We haven’t come anywhere close since then.

Remember also that current hospitalizations are also nowhere close to peak – in fact, at no time were hospitals overwhelmed.  And this was the sole goal of the lockdown.

The case fatality rate of the disease has proven a bust for talking up the lockdown due, oops, to its very high survival rate.  Concurrently, the lockdown has been real … er, unpopular for a while now, what with all the inconvenient deaths (suicide, unwillingly missed healthcare, overdoses) and wholesale destruction of people’s lives and livelihoods it is inflicting.  Accordingly, as noted, the new “selling point” of continuing a highly damaging and harmful lockdown has been the case positivity rate.  Except as we see plainly from that graph, this is a bust as well.

In short, it is starkly clear that any continuation of a lockdown, much less even more restrictions, is not justified by facts, science, the newest talking point or, most telling, the state’s own data.