A new study, published as a working paper for the leading U.S. think tank National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), has shown (once again) that lockdown policies produced no discernible reduction of the pandemic death toll. If anything, they increased it.
The study uses excess deaths rather than Covid deaths to avoid the problems of different ways of counting Covid deaths, and also to capture policy deaths from lockdowns and other Government responses. It looks at the death tolls in 43 countries and all U.S. states to see how they varied with the length and timeliness of lockdown “shelter-in-place” (SIP) orders.
The authors find that longer lockdowns led to more excess deaths: “Countries with a longer duration of SIP [shelter in place] policies are the ones with higher excess deaths per 100,000 residents.” For U.S. states the finding was similar but less pronounced.
In U.S. states, earlier lockdowns were associated with slightly higher excess deaths rather than lower as lockdown theory would predict. In the comparison of countries, on the other hand, the predicted relationship was found.
To account for differences between countries and states (such as demographics) the authors carried out “event studies” to see how much each country or state’s excess deaths changed following lockdown from its pre-lockdown trend. This analysis showed that, prior to implementing lockdown policies, the trend of lockdown countries was towards having lower excess deaths than countries that didn’t implement lockdowns. However, after lockdown those trends were reversed so that lockdown countries started to have progressively worse excess deaths compared to no-lockdown countries.
The results from the event study regression models suggest that difference in excess mortality between countries that implemented SIP versus countries that did not implement SIP was trending downwards in the weeks prior to SIP implementation. Had this pre-existing difference in mortality trends continued, we would expect lower excess mortality in the weeks following SIP implementation in countries that implemented SIP policies relative to countries that did not implement policies. However, we find that the pre-existing trend reversed following implementation of SIP policies. This suggest that our estimates of the effects of SIP on excess mortality are conservative as pre-existing trends are biased towards finding a protective effect of SIP.
The authors conclude that “the implementation of SIP [lockdown] policies does not appear to have met the aim of reducing excess mortality”.
They offer some reasons for why this might be the case.
There are several potential explanations for this finding. First, it is possible that SIP policies do not slow COVID-19 transmission. As discussed earlier, prior studies find only a modest effect of SIP policies on mobility. A potential reason for the modest impact on mobility may be that individuals change behaviour to avoid COVID-19 risk even in the absence of SIP policies. It is also unclear whether modest reductions in mobility could slow the spread of an airborne pathogen.
Second, it is possible that SIP policies increased deaths of despair due to economic and social isolation effects of SIP policies. Recent estimates in the U.S between March and August 2020 show that drug overdoses, homicides, and unintentional injuries increased in 2020, while suicides declined.
Third, existing studies suggest that SIP policies led to a reduction in non-COVID-19 health care, which might have contributed to an increase in non-COVID-19 deaths. For example, one study in the United Kingdom predicts that there will be approximately an additional 3,000 deaths within five years due to a delay in diagnostics because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In light of this evidence, continued reliance on SIP policies to slow COVID-19 transmission may not be optimal. Instead, the best policy response may be pharmaceutical interventions in the form of vaccinations and therapeutics when they become available. Early evidence suggests that initial vaccination efforts have led to large reductions in COVID-19 incidence. Policy efforts to promote vaccination are thus likely to have large positive impacts.
The study adds to the ever-growing collection which show that lockdowns are not just extremely costly, so unlikely to be worth the price tag, but perhaps most damningly fail to achieve their primary goal of reducing deaths.
Read the full study here.
Stop Press: HART‘s Professor Marilyn James was on talkRADIO yesterday afternoon talking to Mark Dolan about the paper. Watch it here.
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It will take 20 years for the rest of “The West” to change course.
The lunacy is deeply embedded. And now, simply opposing US policies is a central commitment of most of the airheads in so-called “governments” and state departments.
With the USA – the biggest World economy – and nobody else outside Europe playing the game, that means 85% (and growing) of the global economy is not part of the Net Zeroid fantasy.
”Europe” with its shrinking economy, depends on that 85%. Putting up carbon tariffs will only hurt “Europe” whilst the rest of the economies of the World trades with each other and enjoys increasing prosperity.
As Bill Clinton’s election campaign manager wisely said: It’s the economy, stupid.
If Government are so keen on green energy, let them lead the way by immediately and completely giving up centrally heated offices, ministerial cars, and jet transport
Thought not…
It isn’t that they are “Keen on Green Energy”—–It is that they are taking their instructions form their globalist bosses at the UN and WEF that we in the wealthy west must give up fossil fuels because we have used up way more than our fair share of what is a finite resource in the ground. 8 billion people in the world all cannot have the same standard of living as us in the wealthy west and so our Political Class have agreed and are forcing wind and sun on us all at astronomical expense. —-Luckily for Americans Trump is not falling for this communist eco scam.
I think my point remains…
Yes your point remains. But Politicians have never done the things they expect us to do, so don’t be too surprised.
Indeed. Lead by example.
They kicked off about noisy heat pumps in the H of C. Bloody thieving, treasonous hypocrites.
The Energy Transition always was a fallacy predicated on climate claptrap.
The game has been given away any number of times down the decades:
https://www.dailysignal.com/2010/11/19/climate-talks-or-wealth-redistribution-talks/
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth…”
…Ottmar Edenhofer, IPCC economist, interviewed ahead of Cop-16 in 2010.
Meanwhile Britain blunders on under the deadweight of the 2008 Climate Claptrap Act, passed by an overwhelming majority of parliamentary lemmings, on an afternoon in late October when snow fell in London.
Bonkers is as bonkers does.
The ‘overwhelming majority’ underplays the near 100% support for the CCA.
Miliband says “People around the world can see the climate crisis is here”—–Oh really? Where? Do people look out of their living room window and say “Oh look at all the climate change”? —–No they don’t.—- If they had not seen all this climate crisis talk on their TV every day they would never suspect anything was amiss with the climate, and that is mostly because there isn’t. ——So what is it that Miliband thinks people are actually seeing?—–He is ofcourse a total fantasist and since energy is the most important commodity it is essential that this idiot is nowhere near energy policy. But having said that there are many more eco fantasists among the Political Class. They are almost all in on the scam. ——-But this idea that the “energy transition” s driven by markets is total nonsense. No one would ever build a wind turbine without the subsidy, because they are totally uneconomical. Coal Gas and Nuclear can always produce full time energy much cheaper, whereas the cost of the back up has to be factored into the cost of wind, sun, tidal or any other of the part time energy solutions.
If they had not seen all this climate crisis talk on their TV every day they would never suspect anything was amiss with the climate
Exactly right.
In exactly the same way that if people hadn’t been fed an unrelenting diet of terrifying propaganda five years ago, they wouldn’t for a second have believed there was a ‘deadly’ killer virus out there…
I look at my weekly gas use and see no crisis but a lot more gas consumption this year compared to last year despite the alleged hottest January ever. Put simply I have used 10 weeks gas in 8 weeks.
Climate cannot be observed. It is a statistical analysis of weather condition over an extended past period.
Climate does not exist – it’s like “the average man”.
Yes—–So what is it that Miliband thinks people “see”?—–
Kill Energy Transition Forever
Is it? How come I don’t notice it?
Maybe it’s like the corpses piling up from COVID, or the epidemic of racism, or the violent bigotry against trans people all of which only seem to exist in the minds of deranged activists.
I have to say, I am keen to see how the counter revolution taking place in the US is going to affect us here in the UK.
So far all I see is the woke and climate extremists in power doubling down on their extremism.
Excellent points.
I think what is happening generally in the US with the Trump administration may embolden politicians and their supporters who were already sympathetic to his politics, and equally embolden those who weren’t – in short, the battle lines will be drawn more clearly. On the whole I think that’s a good thing. The more extreme the socialist fascists become, the more people will wake up.
This morning’s glorious sunshine has made me optimistic
It was nice yesterday in the sun but chilly in the shade. It is meteorological spring now and the sun on my conservatory is warming up nicely.
Will soon be bright enough to start making Vitamin D.
It should be no surprise to UK readers that that “unstoppable” word was used by the country’s most dangerous person, the green ideologue Ed Miliband
Yes, an unstoppable train, heading towards the buffers, and full of gullible people saying everything is on track and fine and dandy.
In 20 years time the current energy “transition” may well be seen as a pointless waste of money, as small modular nuclear generators become widespread, and old wind farms are decommissioned rather than replaced.
Precious fossil fuels would then be used exclusively for making steel, lubricants and chemicals.
“… engage in what Harold Demsetz called “nirvana economics”, a term that describes the tendency to compare real-world situations with unrealistic, idealised alternatives, often leading to flawed conclusions about the efficacy of proposed policies.”
Same playbook, different domain. We’re all going to die if we don’t do as we’re told:
IPCC = WHO
EPA = CDC
Greenhouse gasses = viral pathogens
Net Zero = herd immunity
Renewables = vaccines
High energy prices = high positive test rates
etc, etc…
… and just like pandemics, one has to be repeatedly reminded there’s an actual climate crisis.
“Mr Bremmer claims that “technological breakthroughs, steep learning curves and plummeting costs have made clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels…”
Not according to my electricity bills and the demand by the wind/solar subsidy harvesting farms for ever higher Contract for Difference rates – currently £128 per MWh, over twice what fossil fuels can give.