A new Johns Hopkins University study published this week found that COVID-19 lockdowns toward the beginning of the pandemic had “little to no effect” on the COVID-19 mortality rate and “should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy.”

The researchers, led by the head of Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, conducted a meta-analysis of 34 studies from the first wave of the pandemic and found that U.S. and European lockdowns, which were held up as an effective tool at limiting deaths, “reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average.”