“I don’t know what they have to say — It makes no difference anyway — Whatever it is, I’m against it — No matter what it is or who commenced it — I’m against it.” —Groucho Marx, “Horse Feathers” (1932)

“There are three kinds of falsehoods: lies, damned lies and statistics.” —Arthur James Balfour (1892)

Perhaps nothing better epitomizes the current state of Lockdown America — and the poisonous machinations of those with a vested political interest in keeping it that way — than the above lyric and quote. That Groucho is portraying a college professor is a poignant reminder that a closed mind is nothing new within the self-anointed “smart set,” whose contempt for dissent has reached metastatic levels.

How metastatic? Our Horse Feather Leftmedia and its allies in the Democrat Party are so invested in hating the current president that any evidence of hope he espouses must be dismissed as moronic quackery. Thus, like an army of Grouchos, they are against hydroxychloroquine, despite the increasing evidence of success it has demonstrated against the virus.

That a survey of 1,271 doctors revealed 65% would prescribe it for stricken family members and 67% would take it themselves? That the FDA and HHS approved it for off-label use? That Detroit Democrat State Representative Karen Whitsett credited it — and President Donald Trump’s promotion of it — with saving her life?

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) called Trump a “drug pusher.” Other talkingheads insisted that Trump had a financial stake in promoting a cheap, generic, and “dangerous” drug in use for over 60 years. And the Leftmedia spiked Whitsett’s story.

If these jackals were solely invested in undermining the president, that would hardly be a deviation from anything they’ve done for the last three-plus years. Tragically, the stakes are far, far higher. “For now, the media, [Nancy] Pelosi, and [Joe] Biden, along with the Left in general, wish to perpetuate a sense of viral Armageddon to make it politically impossible for Trump to initiate a graduated plan of returning America to work,” columnist Victor Davis Hanson explains. “Their hope is for a summer and fall of continued lockdown, a near depression rather than a mere recession, and enough public furor to end Trump in November.”

It’s worse than that. Courtesy of relentless scare-mongering and a contemptible fealty for CCP propaganda, the media are making it increasingly clear they want to override elected officials’ decisions — with ample help from unelected “experts” — about when to reopen the country. Nothing speaks better to this insidious effort than their ongoing assertions that America is faced with a binary choice: either we shut down the country indefinitely, or we accept complicity in the deaths of our fellow citizens.

In other words, simultaneously opening up the country and protecting the vulnerable is a nonstarter — and they have the statistics to “prove it.”

What statistics? Those provided by experts often at odds with each other. Those based on largely inaccurate computer modeling, provided by both the Imperial College in London and the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). Stats driven by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has introduced a new code whereby someone who died with COVID-19 in their body will be counted as someone who died of COVID-19 — absent complete confirmation.

Dr. Annie Bukacek, MD, who has filled out death certificates for 30 years, reveals the problematic nature of such stats: “More often than we want to admit, we don’t know with certainty the cause of death when we fill out death certificates.” More important, she also insists that Americans should be concerned “when governments are making massive changes that affect our constitutional rights and those changes are based on inaccurate statistics.”

Nonetheless, those who challenge the statistics — or, more accurately, the reaction to them that has precipitated the loss of more than 16 million jobs in just three weeks, enforced lockdowns, the massive expansion of government debt, and the introduction of a Stasi-like atmosphere where Americans are encouraged to turn in their neighbors for perceived infractions of constitutionally dubious measures — are considered outliers at best, or pariahs at worst.

Yet a fundamental question must be asked: With regard to any attack on America, virus or otherwise, what’s the statistical threshold for imposing — and possibly reimposing — Big Tech-abetted surveillance-state totalitarianism?

The current threshold revolves around the rates of contagion and mortality, and it is quite telling that the one thing that would reveal the most about both remains very elusive: Widespread testing.

Where are the tests? “The failure to implement early and wide testing, which was caused by a combination of short-sightedness, ineptitude, and bureaucratic intransigence, left politicians scrambling to avoid a hospital crisis by imposing broad business closure and stay-at-home orders,” explains columnist Jacob Sullum. “It foreclosed the possibility of a more proactive and targeted approach, focused on identifying carriers, tracing their contacts, and protecting the public through isolation and quarantines.”

Columnist John Tierney is even more blunt, writing, “Americans are dying daily because of FDA regulations that have repeatedly delayed testing for the Covid-19 virus and impeded the manufacture and deployment of masks and other protective equipment.”

What if many more Americans have or have had this virus than we currently know (there are indications of such), possibly with the majority exhibiting little or no symptoms? What if the final mortality rate turns out to be lower than the seasonal flu? While we were told social distancing is absolutely necessary to prevent healthcare facilities from being overwhelmed, we’re also in the midst of furloughing healthcare workers, due to dramatic slowdowns in emergency-room visits, and closing army field hospitals before they treat a single patient.

Thus, another inconvenient question arises: What if the entire social-distancing agenda that has ostensibly mitigated the virus’s spread — an assertion challenged by immunologist Dr. Martin Dubravec and others — leads to a massive outbreak in the future, precisely because of that social distancing?

“What happens after we are done hunkering down?” asks radio host Mark Levin. “Doesn’t that mean millions of people never had the virus because they successfully hunkered down? Doesn’t that mean millions of people will be highly susceptible to getting it again or getting it the first time?”

Dr. Wittkowski, former head of the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at the Rockefeller University in New York City, asserts, “[When] you flatten the curve, you also prolong, to widen it, and it takes more time. And I don’t see a good reason for a respiratory disease to stay in the population longer than necessary.”

Wittkowski believes the virus can be “exterminated” by allowing most people to lead normal lives, while the vulnerable remain sheltered.

Who’s right? Without widespread testing it’s impossible to know, but it is imperative to keep asking what many consider “improper” questions for the simplest of reasons: The alternative, as professor Angelo Codevilla puts it, is to “quietly accept non-legal decrees from on high,” courtesy of a Ruling Class that “savors the grip on us that it has achieved during the past three weeks.”

And if three weeks becomes six months? Medical crises ultimately abate. An appetite for absolute power? Not so much.