A shocking new meta-analysis of several studies by highly respected Johns Hopkins University has found that locking down our economies around the world over COVID-19 had almost zero effect on reducing the death rate, and yet most Democrats continue to push for them.
“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 noted, according to Fox News. “In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.
“We find little to no evidence that mandated lockdowns in Europe and the United States had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality rates,” the researchers wrote.
The network adds:
The researchers – Johns Hopkins University economics professor Steve Hanke, Lund University economics professor Lars Jonung, and special advisor at Copenhagen’s Center for Political Studies Jonas Herby – analyzed the effects of lockdown measures such as school shutdowns, business closures, and mask mandates on COVID-19 deaths.
The researchers also examined shelter-in-place orders, finding that they reduced COVID-19 mortality by 2.9%.
Studies that looked at only shelter-in-place orders found they reduced COVID-19 mortality by 5.1%, but studies that looked at shelter-in-place orders along with other lockdown measures found that shelter-in-place orders actually increased COVID-19 mortality by 2.8%.
So at best, then, lockdowns were a complete wash, and limiting the size of gatherings actually boosted COVID mortality rates.
[Shelter-in-place orders] 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,” the study noted.
“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,” the researchers noted further.
One of the things that never made any sense throughout the pandemic was the left’s insistence that gyms and other places of recreation be closed as well, given that early on, scientists understood that people who were not in the best of shape or had preexisting conditions were more at risk of developing a serious case of COVID-19 or dying from it. But that policy never changed throughout the pandemic.
That said, the researchers did find that closure of non-essential businesses may have been the only intervention that made any difference, having likely reduced mortality by around 10.6 percent, “but this effect was likely driven by the closure of bars,” Fox News reported, citing the data.
There were also many unintended consequences of sustained lockdowns well beyond the initial ‘two weeks to slow the spread.’ They include rising unemployment, increased drug overdoses (from depression), falling income, reduced education, and an uptick in domestic violence incidents.
From a few months into the pandemic, May 2020, to April 2021, the U.S. saw a 28.5 percent increase in overdose deaths, climbing from 78,056 from the previous year to 100,306 last year according to CDC data.
According to a Horace Mann survey last year, a stunning 97 percent of teachers reported that their students suffered learning loss throughout the past year. Meanwhile, a National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice study from the same period found that in the U.S., domestic violence incidents shot up 8.1 percent after lockdowns went into effect.
“These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best,” the researchers in the Johns Hopkins University study wrote.
“Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument.”
Nevertheless, several mostly Democrat-run cities and states continue to follow these failed, harmful policies and likely will despite the new findings.
