Up to half the excess deaths in American nursing homes were due to the impact of lockdowns and mitigation measures on frail residents rather than the virus. That’s the conclusion of epidemiologist Professor Eyal Shahar in a new analysis of a study on U.S. nursing home deaths.
The study, published in the Journal of Health Economics in 2022, found that the greater the mitigation efforts in U.S. nursing homes, the higher the death toll during the pandemic. “Those efforts not only largely failed to reduce Covid mortality, but they also added non-Covid deaths. The more they tried to mitigate, the worse the outcome was,” notes Prof. Shahar.
“These results are consistent in three consecutive periods: May through September 2020, September through December 2020, and December 2020 through April 2021. Moreover, the relationship between quality ranking and mortality became stronger over time,” he adds.
The reason was the non-Covid death toll: “The higher the ranking, the higher the number of non-Covid deaths”.
While in the first wave the harsh mitigation measures do appear to have reduced Covid deaths somewhat, this effect was “insufficient” to make-up for the non-Covid deaths associated with a higher ranking. It was also not true for later waves.
The study authors propose the most likely causal explanation: that higher ranked nursing homes imposed stricter – and deadlier – mitigation measures. Prof. Shahar writes:
Quality ranking was a surrogate for adherence to mitigation guidelines. The higher the quality of a nursing home, the more strictly official guidelines were followed. And those guidelines had a wide range of adverse consequences, which the authors describe as “unfortunate downsides to these early policies that could have negatively impacted nursing home resident health”.
Citing relevant studies, they specify some of the mechanisms: extreme isolation, which may be deadly in Alzheimer’s; unsupervised meals leading to weight loss; a lack of communal activities, which reduced exercise and increased the time spent in bed; and a large decline in regular medical care of frail, elderly residents. These plausible mechanisms are documented in horrific personal stories.
The study authors claim that vaccination helped protect from Covid from 2021 onwards. Looking at their data, Prof. Shahar disputes this:
The effectiveness of Covid vaccines against Covid death was temporary and mediocre at best. Most likely, it was near zero or negative in the frail elderly. … The case fatality rate (CFR) did not decrease during the vaccination campaign. Nor did Covid vaccines reduce Covid and all-cause mortality in that vulnerable population.
Prof. Shahar estimates the proportion of excess deaths attributable to the mitigation measures. Making the defensible assumption that the lowest-ranking nursing homes show the level of mortality with no mitigation at all, he calculates that mitigation efforts accounted for “one-third to half of the excess mortality in 12 months”.
Notably, the study authors don’t try to claim the non-Covid deaths were missed Covid – a common argument from those wanting to exaggerate the impact of the virus. Prof. Shahar goes further and criticises the authors for failing to recognise that around a quarter of ‘Covid’ deaths were no such thing as they died ‘with Covid’ from other conditions: “Based on CDC data, about 25% of Covid deaths in the U.S. were misattributed in the first five months of 2021.”
With no evidence of net, or even any, benefit, and clear evidence of a devastating death toll, this study’s important findings show that even for those most vulnerable to the virus – those who many argue should receive ‘focused protection’ – mitigation measures do far more harm than good.
It turns out, when a flu-like virus comes along – even a novel(ish) and potentially engineered one – there’s still no better response than to keep calm and carry on. And whatever you do, don’t jettison dignity, compassion and freedom. It can be deadly.
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Once again, this demonstrates that the youngest of the population was hit the hardest – disproportionally.
Imagine having already taken your theory test and passed, only to find out, through no fault of your own, you have to fork out for another one along with additional lessons, all because the government decided to abandon it’s pandemic strategy and locked down the country needlessly.
The issues arising from a locked down country are only now really rearing their ugly heads: suicides, depression, NHS waiting lists measuring years, hugely reduced population immunity, failed businesses, etc. 🙁
Which is severely affecting some youngsters employment chances. My son and next doors son (both 21) are in this situation, luckily they have Mums who will/can be taxi not all are so lucky. We live in an area where many jobs are not accessible by public transport. As if having their education f**ked up for the last 2 years wasn’t enough.
Early during Lockdown lite (last summer) I met a young chap who had to take two lengthy bus journeys to get to work in a distribution centre.
Previously he had made the much shorter cross country journey on his motorbike.
Sadly his Provisional licence was ‘timed out’ since the DVSA were not conducting tests because lockdown. Not only that but so had his theory test so, when the DVLC finally got back to work, he would have to start from scratch.
I posted about it at the time here at Lockdownsceptics under the general topic of unintended consequences.
Ed. Exactly as described by JIGR1969 above at the very same time of posting
I doubt this is news to the majority of us who predicted from the start many of, if not all, the problems we are encountering now. Whenever anyone brings them up I do not hestitate to tell them that they are a consequence of lockdown policies and all associated restrictions.
Likewise, lost count of the number of times someone has blamed their misfortune on the Covid when in reality it was caused by lockdown. They require remaining.
“Hundreds of thousands of learner drivers are waiting up to 24 weeks to take their test in some parts of the UK due to a backlog caused by the coronavirus pandemic.”
DM as usual playing its part in maintaining the panicker propaganda.
An honest, but cautious, way of expressing the truth would have been:
“Hundreds of thousands of learner drivers are waiting up to 24 weeks to take their test in some parts of the UK due to a backlog caused by
the coronavirus pandemicthe government’s policy choices in response to the coronavirus“.Much more honest and accurate would be:
“Hundreds of thousands of learner drivers are waiting up to 24 weeks to take their test in some parts of the UK due to a backlog caused by
the coronavirus pandemicthe government’s panic over-reaction to the latest new cold virus to hit humanity“.That Lockdow/Covid Pandemic willful ‘confusion’ has been an irritating constant from politicians and the media since April last year.
There’s a better word than ‘confusion’ that I can’t recall offhand, confabulation or something.
Yes, “if you fuck up or just don’t wish to do something, just blame the pandemic” has been the mantra from day one.
It’s shocking that nobody up there is talking about the “moral hazard” from tolerating this sort of attitude (which was quickly picked up from politicians by all other sorts of tossers across society).
“Moral hazard” used to be a big topic during the financial crisis (if we rescue the bankers, they will just laugh at us and keep behaving the same or worse), but somehow these concerns have completely disappeared during The Pandemic.
Along with the concerns about limitless resort to the magical money tree…
Could have been worse
It’s ok. It’s pointless to get a driver’s licence anyways, since under the New World Order we won’t own cars and we will depend on public transport.
Yes but you will be happy
even if it takes a lot of medicating.
Public transport needs to get a lot better then. Son works at a power station, no public transport services it. He and the other young engineers drive or they run out of workers and we all run out of power.
Coincidentally the govt will likely announce silly e-scooters can be driven on a provisional licence, and blammo, the push towards a prohibition on cars for the plebs moves ever closer,
In a video showing yesterday’s Halloween March in London the seried ranks of ‘boris bikes’ can be seen. Not one of them in use.
Similarly, when the regime forced motorcycle training to halt, and 2-year Compulsory Basic Training (CBT) certificates started to expire, there was a back-bench, genuinely cross party motion to extend them. Amazingly, even my own socialist MP agreed to support it, on the basis that Poors are likely to rely on small capacity motorcycles and scooters, and that it would allow nothing more than riders continuing to do what they’d already been doing safely for 2 years.
Of course, the regime laughed it off and said no, you have to do another training course. Except, you can’t, because we shut the training centres down. Tough.
https://www.bennetts.co.uk/bikesocial/news-and-views/news/2021/february/government-refuses-cbt-extension-during-lockdown
https://www.bitchute.com/video/40Ho2GR6t86Z/
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