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Lockdowns “Did Not Lead to Reductions in Excess Deaths” – Study

by Will Jones
25 June 2021 12:34 AM

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYZ2Ae5Upy4&t=746s
Tags: Excess deathsLockdown harmsLockdownsNBER

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19 Comments
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Jack the dog
Jack the dog
9 months ago

Ok fair enough, and your point is?

7
-7
FerdIII
FerdIII
9 months ago
Reply to  Jack the dog

Save the Muslim Jihad appears to be the point. Muslims sacred. Infidels – who cares.
I wonder where the author is on the 1 million white girls raped by the Muslim Jihad in the UK? No need for ‘bodily autonomy’ in that case is there?

1
-4
Steven Robinson
Steven Robinson
9 months ago

It is good that The Daily Sceptic published this, because, with its almost unequivocal support of Israel’s assaults on the Palestinian people and consequent killing of tens of thousands of innocent children and adults, it must be precisely what Dr Bell had in mind:

‘Suddenly country, religious dogma, ethnic group or colour becomes a more important definition of human worth than humanity itself.’

‘We are seeing children dying in wars and unrest. Social media is replete with posts minimising this because this group had previously done something to that group, or vice versa. Several of those I admired and supported through the Covid period are now prominent in doing the same.’

Israel feels no compunction in killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and reducing their homes to ground zero in revenge for the 1200 Israelis killed on 7 October. It’s as in the days before the Flood, when Lamech boasted:
“You wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for striking me.
If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold,
then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold.”

Like Netanyahu himself, Will Jones and others thought that this was all OK.

Last edited 9 months ago by Steven Robinson
5
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Marque1
Marque1
9 months ago
Reply to  Steven Robinson

Still blaming the Israelis.

11
-4
chesterbear
chesterbear
9 months ago
Reply to  Marque1

Only the jewish ones

5
-4
Insurrectionist
Insurrectionist
9 months ago
Reply to  Marque1

That all depends on when exactly your history starts…
Most idiots think history some how started on the 7th Oct 23….

0
-1
sskinner
sskinner
9 months ago
Reply to  Steven Robinson

“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.”
Golda Meir

10
-6
Insurrectionist
Insurrectionist
9 months ago
Reply to  sskinner

Says the Zionist who dreams of a greater Israel and whatever means it takes… Ahem, Genocide.

I mean… The irony…

0
-3
Insurrectionist
Insurrectionist
9 months ago
Reply to  Steven Robinson

Good post,
There wasn’t 1200 killed, fake news from ZAKA, there were 750ish, with at least 2 dozen killed by Israeli forces.

Last edited 9 months ago by Insurrectionist
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Monro
Monro
9 months ago

‘Each child in Darfur, Yemen, the villages of central Africa, Gaza or Israel is a child of us all’

And also in Ukraine.

‘A children’s hospital in Kyiv has been hit after Russia launched a wave of missile strikes against cities across Ukraine.

Two people died when the Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital – Ukraine’s biggest paediatrics facility – sustained major damage during the blast.

Thirty-six people were killed and 140 people were injured in the strikes, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on Monday.

Russia denied targeting the hospital, saying it had been hit by fragments of a Ukrainian air defence missile, while Ukraine said it had found remnants of a Russian cruise missile.’

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cl4y1pjk2dzo.amp

Last edited 9 months ago by Monro
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GlassHalfFull
GlassHalfFull
9 months ago
Reply to  Monro

There you go again believing Zelensky, his minions and the BBC.

12
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sskinner
sskinner
9 months ago
Reply to  GlassHalfFull

So Russia didn’t invade Ukraine and Russia hasn’t been shelling Ukrainian houses, hospitals and anything that makes a civil society function?

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/russian-general-troops-killed-civilians-ukraine/

…Witnesses and survivors in Bucha, as well as Ozera, Babyntsi and Zdvyzhivka — all areas under Chaiko’s command — told the AP and FRONTLINE that Russian soldiers tortured and killed people on the slightest suspicion they might be helping the Ukrainian military. Sweeps intensified after Russian positions were hit with precision, interviews and video show, and soldiers, in intercepted phone calls obtained by the AP, told their loved ones that they’d been ordered to take a no-mercy approach to suspected informants.

Soldiers told their mothers, wives and friends back in Russia that they had killed people simply for being out on the street when “real” civilians would have been in the basement, calls the Ukrainian government intercepted near Kyiv show.

On March 21, a soldier named Vadim called his mother: “We have the order to take phones from everyone and those who resist — in short — to hell with the f——.”

“We have the order: It does not matter whether they’re civilians or not. Kill everyone.”

1
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GlassHalfFull
GlassHalfFull
9 months ago
Reply to  sskinner

Your government and their presstitutes in the main stream media will be pleased you have believed all their lies, propaganda and omissions of the truth.

Bucha was committed by Ukraine to blame it on Russia.
 
From an interview with Frenchman Adrian Bocquet, who was in Bucha, to the publication “Voice of Truth”:
https://golos.eu/adrian-boke-francziya-ya-svidetel-voennyh-prestuplenij-kievskogo-rezhima/
 
“I was in Bucha (directly in the city itself), I witnessed this staging with corpses; and saw how they placed several corpses in one place to make them believe that there were a lot of dead. I have seen it with my own eyes and have even been in numerous trials about it. Do you want to know the truth [first hand]? Discuss these issues with the population of Bucha – they explain to you that this was done by the “Azov” and the SBU officers, who took the lives of civilians, in order to then blame the Russian military for these crimes … In fact, they killed their own Ukrainian brothers even for the fact that they gave water to the Russian military… The purpose of all this is to attract the attention and sympathy of the West and the United States, to demonize the Russians in order to show them as ruthless devils, and the Ukrainians as unfortunate victims. That is, the point was to distribute the roles on stage: this is bad, and this is good … Another proof that Bucha is a staging: France and some other countries sent special forensic police [to Ukraine] to carry out an investigation and find out who killed these civilians. As a result, forensic experts around the world found no evidence that the Russians were involved in the killings of these civilians.”

4
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Monro
Monro
9 months ago
Reply to  sskinner

‘Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to French journalist Adrien Bocquet.’

Tass (!) 24 Feb 2023

0
0
Monro
Monro
9 months ago
Reply to  Monro

‘An analysis conducted by Bellingcat using social media footage as well as a 3D model of the missile, all point to the munition being a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile. The analysis is in line with the view of experts, including Fabian Hoffman, a doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo who specialises in missile technology.  

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons and missile expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California, similarly concluded in an email to Bellingcat that a Kh-101 missile could be seen in footage of the attack posted to social media sites.

A Reuters photo from the scene captures the same pattern of damage that can be seen in the Gazeta.ua image that shows the same missile remnants as those posted by the SBU.

The full Gazeta.ua image can be geolocated just a few metres west of the damaged hospital building (50.450632, 30.481437) thanks to other images and videos from the scene captured by Reuters.

Bellingcat also tested an alternative theory floated online that the missile was a US-made AIM-120, but found no evidence for this.’

-1
-6
GlassHalfFull
GlassHalfFull
9 months ago
Reply to  Monro

Laughable.
Bellendcat?????
Really?????
Defense and security analyst Richard Galustian states that the group’s founder, Eliot Higgins, cannot be taken seriously as he heavily relies on unverifiable and “manipulated” social media sources. Higgins has been repeatedly praised by Western media as a bulwark against sinister Russian disinformation and is affiliated with the Atlantic Council, a pro-NATO think tank.
 
“[He] is a complete fraudster. An unemployed internet addict who for ridiculous reasons ‘sells’ himself as an expert … [Higgins] is part of a new generation of cyber armchair sleuths who use open source social media to gather ‘intelligence’ from on the ground,” Galustian said.
(Richard Galustian is a business and security analyst who has lived in Libya since 2011.)
https://www.rt.com/news/438524-bellingcat-skripal-russia-passports/
 
Despite promoting itself as an “independent” and open-source investigation site, Bellingcat has received a significant portion of its funding from Google, which is also one of the most powerful U.S. military contractors and whose rise to prominence was directly aided by the CIA.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/omidyars-intercept-teams-up-with-war-propaganda-firm-bellingcat/250477/
 
Bellingcat: The website behind the Skripal revelation.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45665380
 
Bellingcat outed by the Independent.
https://off-guardian.org/2018/10/11/bellingcat-outed-by-the-independent/
 
Mary Dejevsky: not known as a Kremlin stooge or Putin troll. Yet here she is, in today’s Independent, asking in all sincerity and with admirable bluntness just WTF is Bellingcat?
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/skripals-bellingcat-gru-novichok-anatoly-chepiga-alexander-mishkin-putin-russia-a8577161.html

0
-1
GlassHalfFull
GlassHalfFull
9 months ago
Reply to  Monro

Bellendcat?????
Really?????

Defense and security analyst Richard Galustian states that the group’s founder, Eliot Higgins, cannot be taken seriously as he heavily relies on unverifiable and “manipulated” social media sources. Higgins has been repeatedly praised by Western media as a bulwark against sinister Russian disinformation and is affiliated with the Atlantic Council, a pro-NATO think tank.
 
“[He] is a complete fraudster. An unemployed internet addict who for ridiculous reasons ‘sells’ himself as an expert … [Higgins] is part of a new generation of cyber armchair sleuths who use open source social media to gather ‘intelligence’ from on the ground,” Galustian said.
(Richard Galustian is a business and security analyst who has lived in Libya since 2011.)
(The Daily Sceptic deleted my previous reply).

Despite promoting itself as an “independent” and open-source investigation site, Bellingcat has received a significant portion of its funding from Google, which is also one of the most powerful U.S. military contractors and whose rise to prominence was directly aided by the CIA.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/omidyars-intercept-teams-up-with-war-propaganda-firm-bellingcat/250477/

Bellingcat outed by the Independent.
https://off-guardian.org/2018/10/11/bellingcat-outed-by-the-independent/
 
Mary Dejevsky: not known as a Kremlin stooge or Putin troll. Yet here she is, in today’s Independent, asking in all sincerity and with admirable bluntness just WTF is Bellingcat?
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/skripals-bellingcat-gru-novichok-anatoly-chepiga-alexander-mishkin-putin-russia-a8577161.html

3
-1
Monro
Monro
9 months ago
Reply to  Monro

It’s a geolocated image.

Have you met Richard Galustian? He’s a MENA ‘businessman’. That’s it.

Mintpress reposts stuff from the St Petersburg ‘Internet Research Agency’.

Mary Dejevsky’s writings have not aged well:

‘Likewise, does the tracking of Navalny by Russia’s security service imply orders to kill? Bellingcat’s own headlines give that impression, but surveillance and hit squads are rather different things.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bme6iimkCOU

0
0
GlassHalfFull
GlassHalfFull
9 months ago

At last The Daily Sceptic has actually posted an article condemning the Israeli killing of thousands of innocent Palestinian children.

7
-11
Brett_McS
Brett_McS
9 months ago

A pointless article, or is virtue signalling the point?

4
-7
FerdIII
FerdIII
9 months ago
Reply to  Brett_McS

The point is not to criticse the Muslim Jihad and its consequences. Blame the Infidel (and rape their women etc etc as Mein Koran states on every page).

1
-1
RTSC
RTSC
9 months ago

We can’t solve all the world’s problems and it’s about time we stopped trying to do it.

After all, they keep telling us they don’t want any “white saviours.”

-1
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JXB
JXB
9 months ago

Eh?

1
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
9 months ago

I don’t think it is altogether true. It is true that many opposed the agenda back then for selfish or political reasons but plenty of those who were against the Covid agenda are against cruelty to others. You can never expect anything better than about twenty percent to be motivated by moral concerns. You won’t be able to persuade the other eighty percent by any means. Even if they were to suffer great pain and misfortune or to were to witness a loved one in agony they still would not be moved. Suffering ennobles some characters but usually it just leads to debasement. You just have to focus on the good and expect that the numbers will always be disappointing.

0
0
Jane G
Jane G
9 months ago

Whom is the author addressing? Is he speaking to DS in particular, to the editors or the readers (who judging by the likes and downticks have a variety of opinions).

I’m not sure of the equivalence; most of us strongly held out for bodily autonomy and we would entirely respect the same for both Israelis and Palestinians, and anyone else for that matter.
The fact that the parties keep trying to kill each other seems to be unrelated. I would treat a Palestinian with dignity and respect just as much as any other person (I have a strong hunch that one of my customers is of that heritage). If two of my neighbours are deadly enemies, what am I supposed to do? Is this all about arms sales and the campaign to stop them?

I don’t particularly favour one group over the other (until they start screaming for jihad in which case they can **** off) but I’d like them to stop attacking each other, and each others’ children.

1
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