Tucker Carlson opened his show on Monday night with the story of the mass lockdown in Shanghai, with more than 24 million people turned into starving prisoners in their homes, as the government adds in the singular cruelty of slaughtering their pets.  This is ostensibly in the name of a "Zero COVID" policy, but that's nonsense.  The real goal is to bring the citizens of Shanghai to heel, lest they pose a threat to Xi Jinping's and the party's dominance.

We've learned a lot about COVID since China released it to the world in 2019.  It's most dangerous to the very elderly and those with comorbidities.  It may well be treatable — if caught early enough — using common, safe medicines such as hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and doxycycline.

And most importantly, we've learned that lockdowns don't work:

States that imposed the harshest lockdowns had the most devastating impact on the public, the most wide-ranging study into Covid restrictions in the US to date has found.

New York, California, New Jersey and Illinois were panned for their pandemic performance after bringing in draconian measures to shut their citizens in their homes.

Those states' Democrat Governors' policies caused high death rates, ruined children's education and destroyed businesses due to the severe curbs on freedom, researchers found as they slapped them with an F-grade.

Nine out of the ten worst responses to the pandemic were in blue states, the report said, with only Republican-run Maryland bucking that trend and coming seventh last.

Meanwhile places that allowed their residents more freedom as coronavirus swept across the country appeared to fair better over the last two years.

You can read the full study here.

And the whole notion of Zero COVID is ridiculous.  Even New Zealand, which kept its borders fanatically closed for two years, was ultimately unable to keep COVID at bay.

Additionally, despite its man-made origins, COVID is doing what all viruses do: they mutate over time and, in the process, become less deadly.  COVID is now just part of the usual panoply of viruses that routinely affect humans.

Image: Shanghai’s lockdown.  YouTube screen grab.

Even though Zero COVID is impossible to achieve and lockdowns are ineffective and dangerous, the Chinese health minister nevertheless went ahead and completely locked down Shanghai, which is China's largest and, not coincidentally, most prosperous city.  Tucker Carlson sums up what's happening there, along with his contention that Xi isn't doing this to stop COVID's spread.  Instead, he's doing it to remind an increasingly Westernized Shanghai that the Chinese Communist Party is still in control:

Tucker: Our leaders are defending what China is doing https://t.co/Fn89TAcmQt

— Bookwormroom (@Bookwormroom) April 12, 2022

I think Tucker's right because what Xi is doing is right out of the Mao Zedong playbook.  Consider these quotations from Chairman Mao about achieving complete control over a population, with mass death being a feature, not a bug:

"When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill."

"All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party."

"Deaths have benefits. They can fertilise the ground."

"Don't make a fuss about a world war. At most, people die. ... Half the population wiped out — this happened quite a few times in Chinese history. ... It's best if half the population is left, next best one-third."

"People say that poverty is bad, but in fact poverty is good. The poorer people are, the more revolutionary they are. It is dreadful to imagine a time when everyone will be rich. ... From a surplus of calories people will have two heads and four legs."

"Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent."

You can be completely sure that Xi is deeply familiar with these words.  Mao may have been a complete megalomaniac and psychopath, but he was correct about the steps to take to control a huge population — including shrinking the population, if necessary.

Tucker is correct that the Democrats would love that kind of control.  However, I'm rather sanguine that, much as they'd like to copy Xi, they won't succeed because of the Second Amendment that they despise.  With well over 400,000,000 guns in American hands, we are not sitting ducks.

Additionally, as the American Revolution, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and the war in Ukraine show, a determined civilian army can hold off a larger professional army.  The Americans won; the starving, unarmed residents of the Warsaw Ghetto severely damaged the Nazis; and the Ukrainians are currently making a damn good showing against Russia.

Be of good hope.  Outside leftist enclaves, we're a country with deep roots in liberty.  Moreover, because leftists have overplayed their hands, Americans are waking up to what's being done to them.  Heck, even the woke Al Sharpton is waking up!