The collateral damage of the pandemic response was “substantial, wide-ranging and will leave behind a legacy of harm for hundreds of millions of people”, a major new study has found.
Reviewing and synthesising 600 publications focused on the impact of the pandemic response, Dr. Kevin Bardosh of the Universities of Washington and Edinburgh concluded that these wide and deep societal harms “should challenge the dominant mental model of the pandemic response”.
The abstract provides a succinct summary of the study, which is currently in pre-print:
Early in the Covid pandemic concerns were raised that lockdown and other non-pharmaceutical interventions would cause significant multidimensional harm to society. This paper comprehensively evaluates the global state of knowledge on these adverse social impacts, with an emphasis on their type and magnitude during 2020 and 2021. A harm framework was developed spanning 10 categories: health, economy, income, food security, education, lifestyle, intimate relationships, community, environment and governance. The analysis synthesises 600 publications with a focus on meta-analyses, systematic reviews, global reports and multi-country studies. This cumulative academic research shows that the collateral damage of the pandemic response was substantial, wide-ranging and will leave behind a legacy of harm for hundreds of millions of people in the years ahead.
Many original predictions are broadly supported by the research data including: a rise in non-Covid excess mortality, mental health deterioration, child abuse and domestic violence, widening global inequality, food insecurity, lost educational opportunities, unhealthy lifestyle behaviours, social polarisation, soaring debt, democratic backsliding and declining human rights. Young people, individuals and countries with lower socioeconomic status, women and those with pre-existing vulnerabilities were hit hardest.
Societal harms should challenge the dominant mental model of the pandemic response: it is likely that many Covid policies caused more harm than benefit, although further research is needed to address knowledge gaps and explore policy trade-offs, especially at a country-level. Planning and response for future global health emergencies must integrate a wider range of expertise to account for and mitigate societal harms associated with government intervention.
The project was supported by Collateral Global, a U.K. registered Charity co-founded by Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff and Sunetra Gupta of the Great Barrington Declaration with Carl Heneghan of the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, “dedicated to researching, understanding and communicating the effectiveness and collateral impacts of the mandatory NPIs taken by governments worldwide in response to the Covid pandemic”.
Read the full study here.
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Good grief. How did this paper pass peer-review?! I think it’s because the authors did a ‘John Campbell’ and are implying something without actually saying the words…
It’s a new German study estimating excess deaths, and I have not had a chance to look through it all yet.
”The results show that the observed number of deaths in 2020 was close to the expected number with respect to the empirical standard deviation; approximately 4,000 excess deaths occurred. By contrast, in 2021, the observed number of deaths was two empirical standard deviations above the expected number and even more than four times the empirical standard deviation in 2022. In total, the number of excess deaths in the year 2021 is about 34,000 and in 2022 about 66,000 deaths, yielding a cumulated 100,000 excess deaths in both years. The high excess mortality in 2021 and 2022 was mainly due to an increase in deaths in the age groups between 15 and 79 years and started to accumulate only from April 2021 onward. A similar mortality pattern was observed for stillbirths with an increase of about 9.4% in the second quarter and 19.4% in the fourth quarter of the year 2021 compared to previous years.
These findings indicate that something must have happened in spring 2021 that led to a sudden and sustained increase in mortality, although no such effects on mortality had been observed during the early COVID-19 pandemic so far. Possible influencing factors are explored in the discussion.”
https://www.cureus.com/articles/149410-estimation-of-excess-mortality-in-germany-during-2020-2022#!/
“These findings indicate that something must have happened in spring 2021 that led to a sudden and sustained increase in mortality, although no such effects on mortality had been observed during the early COVID-19 pandemic so far.”
That is really funny. I don’t seek to downplay the sadness behind this but talk about tongue in cheek
I click on the ‘cureus’ link and the page disappears immediately. I found this instead. Is it the same paper?
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362777743_Excess_mortality_in_Germany_2020-2022
Strange, the above link still works for me. It does appear to be the same but yours is dated Aug 2022 and mine May 2023 so I presume it’s because I’ve linked the version that has been peer-reviewed. I only had a quick skim of yours so maybe there’s some additions or changes to the more recent version but certainly it’s the same authors and the same conclusion, graphs etc.
Thank you. I’ve tried the link with a different browser and it worked. Interesting that they were looking at the under 80s.
If the WHO (aka Gates/bigpharma etc) get their way then the only way of avoiding future lockdowns when the next pandemic is released, sorry, occurs naturally, is a universal vaccine passport, based on the wonderful mRNA platform.
Just part of priming us up for digital currency/carbon credits and total control.
No jab, no job, no freedom, no life.
I heard that the Rothschilds scolded Putin for refusing to have any of it (it was on Twitter), but does anyone know if it’s true?
Nothing to lose, no reason to comply.
scolded Putin for refusing to have any of it
Seems very unlikely, they have been gung ho for the Sputnik vaccines (similar to Astrazeneca but with no official pharmacovigilance in Russia), biometric ID and the WHO for a while now. The one advantage they have is the scepticism shown by the Russian people, who are less likely to assume that something is a good idea just because the government says so.
The following extracts are from the WEF book COVID-19: The Great Reset.
On the first page of the book ‘Covid-19: The Great Reset’ it begins:
“Since it made its entry on the world stage, COVID-19 has dramatically torn up the existing script of how to govern countries, live with others and take part in the global economy.”
Page 33 – Just to provide a broad and oversimplified example, the containment of the coronavirus pandemic will necessitate a global surveillance network capable of identifying new outbreaks as soon as they arise...
Page 95 The return of “big” government – Taxation will increase, particularly for the most privileged, because governments will need to strengthen their resilience capabilities and wish to invest more heavily in them. As advocated by Joseph Stiglitz: “The first priority is to provide more funding for the public sector, especially for those parts of it that are designed to protect against the multitude of risks that a complex society faces, and to fund the advances in science and higher-quality education, on which our future prosperity depends. These are areas in which productive jobs – researchers, teachers, and those who help run the institutions that support them – can be created quickly. Even as we emerge from this crisis, we should be aware that some other crisis surely lurks around the corner.
Page 102 – Youth activism is increasing worldwide, being revolutionized by social media that increases mobilization to an extent that would have been impossible before. It takes many different forms, ranging from non-institutionalized political participation to demonstrations and protests, and addresses issues as diverse as climate change, economic reforms, gender equality and LGBTQ rights. The young generation is firmly at the vanguard of social change. There is little doubt that it will be the catalysts for change and a source of critical momentum for the Great Reset.
Page 114 – Global Governance
Put bluntly, we live in a world in which nobody is in charge.
(There is much here on the importance of global governance as opposed to national governance)
Page 142 – This brings us to the all-important question of whether the pandemic will eventually exercise a positive or negative effect on climate change policies. “A Great Reset is necessary to build a new social contract that honours the dignity of every human being,” added Schwab “The global health crisis has laid bare the unsustainability of our old system in terms of social cohesion, the lack of equal opportunities and inclusiveness. Nor can we turn our backs on the evils of racism and discrimination. We need to build into this new social contract our intergenerational responsibility to ensure that we live up to the expectations of young people.”
Page 153 – Technological Reset – We will see how contact tracing has an unequalled capacity and a quasi-essential place in the armoury needed to combat COVID-19, while at the same time being positioned to become an enabler of mass surveillance.
Page 156 – Accelerating the digital transformation – In one form or another, social and physical distancing measures are likely to persist after the pandemic itself subsides, justifying the decision in many companies from different industries to accelerate automation. After a while, the enduring concerns about technological unemployment will recede as societies emphasize the need to restructure the workplace in a way that minimizes close human contact. Indeed, automation technologies are particularly suited to a world in which human beings can’t get too close to each other or are willing to reduce their interactions.
Page 157 – In 2016, two academics from Oxford University came to the conclusion that up to 86% of jobs in restaurants, 75% of jobs in retail and 59% of jobs in entertainment could be automatized by 2035. These three industries are the most hardest hit by the pandemic and in which automating for reasons of hygiene and cleanliness will be a necessity…
Page 160 – The most effective form of tracking or tracing is obviously the one powered by technology: it not only allows backtracking all the contacts with whom the user of a mobile phone has been in touch, but also tracking the user’s real time movements, which in turn affords the possibility to better enforce a lockdown.
(continued)
Page 165 – As the coronavirus crisis recedes and people start returning to the workplace, the corporate move will be towards greater surveillance; for better or worse, companies will be watching and sometimes recording what their workforce does. The trend could take many different forms, from measuring body temperatures with thermal cameras to monitoring via an app how employees comply with social distancing…
Page 173 – In short, a return to business as usual. This won’t happen because it can’t happen. For the most part “Business as usual” died from (or at the very least was infected by) COVID-19.
Page 174 – For some, like entertainment, travel or hospitality, a return to pre-pandemic environment is unimaginable in the foreseeable future (and maybe never in some cases…)…
Page 197 – The pandemic may increase our anxiety about sitting in an enclosed space with complete strangers, and many people may decide that staying at home to watch the latest movie or opera is the wisest option.
Reviewing that could keep us busy. – 119 pages. As it says on page 55 section 2: “Important knowledge gaps need to be filled”. I’m not criticising, but it has created a lot of work for certain academics. I wonder if it covers the issue of opportunism for some, with no real benefit to most of us. At least “something is being done” – although that attitude has been part of the problem over the last few years.