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Lockdowns are a failure. That’s the gist of a new in-depth study from Johns Hopkins. How much of a failure? Covid mortality rates were reduced by a mere .2%
Lockdowns during the first COVID-19 wave in the spring of 2020 only reduced COVID-19 mortality by .2% in the U.S. and Europe, according to a Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of several studies.
“While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted,” the researchers wrote. “In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”
POINT TWO PERCENT! That’s it. That’s all the lockdowns did in regards to keeping us “safe” from Covid. In other words, the draconian lockdowns have solved nothing and have, as we’ve written about multiple times, caused more problems than it solved!
Are you angry yet? Are you done with lockdowns and mandates yet? You all should be. I most definitely am. Here’s something from the long meta study to ponder as to why the lockdowns were such an abject failure.
Our results are in line with the World Health Organization Writing Group (2006), who state, “Reports from the 1918 influenza pandemic indicate that social-distancing measures did not stop or appear to dramatically reduce transmission […]
In Edmonton, Canada, isolation and quarantine were instituted; public meetings were banned; schools, churches, colleges, theaters, and other public gathering places were closed; and business hours were restricted without obvious impact on the epidemic.” Our findings are also in line with Allen’s (2021) conclusion: “The most recent research has shown that lockdowns have had, at best, a marginal effect on the number of Covid 19 deaths.”
~Snip
Unintended consequences may play a larger role than recognized. We already pointed to the possible unintended consequence of SIPOs, which may isolate an infected person at home with his/her family where he/she risks infecting family members with a higher viral load, causing more severe illness. But often, lockdowns have limited peoples’ access to safe (outdoor) places such as beaches, parks, and zoos, or included outdoor mask mandates or strict outdoor gathering restrictions, pushing people to meet at less safe (indoor) places. Indeed, we do find some evidence that limiting gatherings was counterproductive and increased COVID-19 mortality
For the last two plus years, reasonable questioning and debate over these lockdowns has led to the stifling of free speech, people getting kicked off of social media platforms, and shouted down at public meetings. The narrative was chosen by weasels such as Fauci and whole heartedly adopted by our betters in the liberal media. Anyone who dared go against that such as the folks with The Great Barrington Declaration or Governor Ron DeSantis were immediately designated as dangerous heretics.
Over the last few weeks, mask and vaccine mandates have been quietly abandoned across the U.S. Full countries are lifting all mandate and lockdown rules.
Now comes a thoroughly researched and documented study telling us that the lockdowns were so ineffective that shutting it all down for two weeks to flatten the curve had a mere .2% effectiveness against Covid mortality.
Guess what? In many places, those shelter in place orders actually INCREASED mortality. You know, like nursing homes. Andrew Cuomo has much to answer for on this. But to have studies actually show what we’ve known all along? That lockdowns kill? Infuriating.
Here’s something else. The study finds that the lockdowns were such a failure that more problems were created during that time.
From May 2020 to April 2021, the U.S. recorded 100,306 drug overdose deaths, a 28.5% increase from the 78,056 deaths that were recorded in the previous 12-month period, according to CDC data.
A study from the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice last year found that domestic violence incidents increased 8.1% in the U.S. after lockdown orders were issued.
About 97% of U.S. teachers said that their students have experienced learning loss during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Horace Mann survey last year.
Oh we know full well how the lockdowns have affected learning loss. We know full well how the lockdowns have affected children with special needs such as autism or speech impediments. The lockdowns caused depression or led to higher increases in depression, that was evident from early on. But to sound warnings about that, people were yelled at and called grandma or baby killers.
Shutting down elective surgeries likely delaying numerous cancer detections was an effect; not just the one they wanted. We should never try such a "blunt instrument" strategy again.
— Tim Withers (@tcwithers) February 1, 2022
Oh yeah, how many people are now dealing with major health issues because many significant healthcare entities determined that cancer screenings, chemo, and multiple other elective surgeries should be shut down for weeks and months to ‘save us all from Covid?’
LOCKDOWNS reduced Covid mortality (deaths) by 0.2% says Johns Hopkins study.
— Cheryl Wetzstein (@CWetzWashTms) February 2, 2022
Coming soon: How many businesses died in lockdown? How many families suffered loss and grief (not just Covid but no hospital visits)? How many kids won’t recover academically?
@WashTimes@DaveBoyer https://t.co/HQlrPxCqrH
The results of those studies will, I’m sure, be horrifying to say the least.
Lockdowns should never ever happen again. They are and were an abject failure on every level. The costs of these lockdowns are just now coming to light and it will take years if not decades to recover.
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Feature Photo Credit: Lockdown quarantine park via Pixabay, cropped and modified
Dietrich says: I hate every Covid Fascist. Every one!
Ib1netmon says: The lockdowns were also in direct contravention of our right to assemble.
Joan Carsey says: We had a discussion on this last night at church. Besides showing my total ignorance of math, everyone else insisted the 0.2% represented twenty percent. In my understanding anything to the right of a decimal point represents anything less than the whole number one. Everyone else said it represents 20% – so all 14 people went away with a totally different understanding of the meaning of this number. Everyone was shouting at me that it meant 20% reduction in deaths and I, alone, said it represented less than one full percent of deaths. What a horrible situation I find myself in. If out of 100 people, twenty died, mostly among older population then that to me is a high number.They need to lay this out more simply for people like me and stop using statistics as they are misleading people’s minds. Twenty percent is a lot and makes it sound like lock downs saved lives. I personally believe this helped to spread out the deaths over time and not overwhelm the system. My neighbors had large family parties for weekends on end during the first months of the pandemic and then disbursed into their work worlds. We kept to ourselves and limited our exposure to very few people and never got sick.
Hate_me says: You are correct. .2% is 2/10 of 1%. It is not 20%. Of a group of 1,000 representative people, 20% would be 200 people; 2% would be 20; .2% would be 2 people. The problem with your church group is a shortcoming of mathematics education, not a failure in reporting.
Now, these lockdowns were hardly complete and far from scientific. A true lockdown may have potentially killed off the virus (though I doubt that would be the case with an RNA virus like corona), but likely would have killed a great many more across other vectors (suicide, starvation, lack of emergency response, etc.) and set in motion countless second- and third-order effects.
As far as overwhelming the healthcare system… the factors for that are myriad. For any disease, the true number infected will always exceed the actual case number; as asymptomatic people are tested as a matter of course (as opposed to only when they believe they might be ill enough to get tested), the more people will unnecessarily consume hospital resources (even administering the tests depletes an already finite workforce). Granted, letting the disease spread without administrative checks could be even more devastating. The catch-22 is that there is no way to know without doing so. We could argue that we just expand the healthcare system – but that can’t be done on short notice, and it comes with its own uncountable list of problems.
Limiting oneself from exposure is a great short-term solution. Hell, The Decameron is one of the greatest pieces of early Renaissance literature. Indigenous Americans were protected from European diseases for millennia because they simply weren’t exposed to it. Of course, isolation only works in isolation.
I’m honestly happy you and yours never got sick, and I hope you remain so. Please don’t paralyze yourselves in the process.
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