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.”
If anything, the shelter-in-place orders and forced limiting of gatherings outdoors might have actually “increased” the death rate by requiring people to stay at home with vulnerable family members, the authors argued.
“We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality,” they wrote.
The decision to shut down “non-essential” businesses, such as bars, was the only lockdown policy the researchers found to be somewhat effective. But even that policy did more harm than good, they argued, citing several of the lockdowns’ “devastating effects.”
“They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” the report read.
In other words, the lockdowns were a failure that might have cost more lives than they saved. For example, from May 2020 to April 2021, drug overdose deaths increased by 28.5% from the year before. Domestic violence incidents increased 8.1%. Depression rates tripled in adults in all demographic groups, and suicide attempts among young children and teenagers skyrocketed.
Our response to the pandemic has had severe consequences, and it is well past time for the public health officials who engineered it to admit as much. But they will likely never have to do so, thanks to our legacy media, which has been radio silent on this study and its findings after spending countless hours over the past two years denouncing the red states that recognized the futility of COVID-19 lockdowns early on.
As of Friday, not one of the major liberal networks (CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC) or national publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, Reuters, or USA Today, had reported on the study, according to Fox News. That’s not a coincidence — it’s deliberate.
Years from now, we’re going to look back at the pandemic and say our response to it was one of the greatest policy failures in this nation’s history. There are many of us who recognize that right now, and those who don’t are either too proud or too cowardly to admit the same.
