This article considers the effectiveness of lockdowns, face masks and vaccination programmes vis-à-vis mitigating COVID-19, with an epilogue on excess deaths.
In the autumn of 2019 a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, began to circulate widely but at a low level. In March 2020, as the influenza season in the Northern Hemisphere subsided, due to a drop in viral interference SARS-CoV-2 surged and became the dominant respiratory virus. COVID-19 spread from China around the world, suppressing influenza, whilst leaving the other human-infecting coronaviruses undisturbed. The vast majority of countries reacted to COVID-19 by imposing non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as lockdowns and facemask policies and, later, vaccination programmes.
Whilst some epidemiological modelling studies give credence to the effectiveness of lockdowns, most studies based on empirical data concluded that lockdowns had little or no effect on COVID-19 transmission, cases or deaths. The collateral damage caused by lockdowns impacted health, economic, social, political, legal, policing and transport issues. Health issues included delayed and missed healthcare, immunity debt, accidents, deaths, mental health, reduced fertility, an increase in obesity, an increase in smoking and alcohol and drug abuse, higher taxes, higher inflation, more people on benefits, waste (test and trace, personal protective equipment and hotel quarantine) and fraud (Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme payments). Children missed school, which compromised their development, communication skills, education and physical and mental health. Lockdowns also generated a workshy workforce and normalised truancy. Lockdowns exacerbated inequalities, too, with the poor being the worst affected. In the Third World, matters were even worse. The United Nations reported that hunger led to the deaths of 10,000 more children per month over the first year of the pandemic. It also estimated that disruptions in South Asia in 2020 likely contributed to 228,000 deaths among children under five years old. The benefits of lockdowns included reduced air pollution, fewer road traffic collisions and a drop in suicide rates. Overall, lockdowns failed a cost-benefit analysis by orders of magnitude. Lockdowns were implemented by governments due to pressure from the WHO and a well-funded international pandemic preparedness lobby, overly pessimistic modelling, risk aversion and the desire to be seen to take action. Lockdowns were then sustained because the media spread fear, whilst the public became fearful, abandoned the care of public affairs to the government-media-education class, trusted leaders and assumed that because governments implemented lockdowns they must work, making them motivated to virtue-signal and support them. Meanwhile, politicians were motivated to retain or seek power, so keen to appease the median voter, and maintained lockdowns, despite the economic and health damage they caused. A vicious circle developed: fear sustained lockdowns and lockdowns sustained fear.
Face masks were not effective at mitigating COVID-19, but can cause dyspnoea, hypoxia, hypoxemia and hypercapnia, harbour pathogens, compromise communication, vision, exercise capacity, cognition and immunity, cause headaches, skin complaints, bad breath and particulate inhalation, facilitate crime and lead to pollution. The only effective use for surgical masks and N95 respirators is for splash and droplet protection in healthcare. P100 respirators are effective (but only for the wearer) against COVID-19. The sad thing is that we’ve not learnt anything new about masks. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, and with reference to an influenza pandemic, meta-analyses of RCTs on community masking published by the WHO and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed no benefit. During the pandemic there were various low-quality observational studies that appeared to show benefit. Then after the pandemic, in 2023, an update to the Cochrane review confirmed that there was no significant evidence that wearing masks in the community reduces the spread of colds, influenza or COVID-19. So we’ve gone full circle, and back where we started before the pandemic: masks don’t work.
In December 2020 COVID-19 vaccination programmes were introduced. The vaccinations failed to provide sterilising immunity or stop transmission. The vaccination exhibits negative efficacy for the first two weeks, probably due to immunosuppression, which increases cases, hospitalisations and deaths. The vaccine, in the pre-Omicron era, then may have provided some protection against hospitalisation and death for the not previously infected for several months, before it waned towards and below zero effectiveness. Because those with ‘breakthrough’ infections may exhibit lesser symptoms, but have a similar viral load to the unvaccinated, they may be more likely to inadvertently spread COVID-19 to others and become superspreaders. In May 2021 the Delta variant appeared triggering new waves and from December 2021 the less severe Omicron variant appeared. The variant displaced harmless cold-causing human coronaviruses, and influenza returned. Vaccination programmes led to the immune system, via original antigenic sin, being fixed for earlier strains, leaving it less able to provide effective responses during subsequent infections. This enabled the natural selection of immune escape subvariants that are highly infectious. We ended up with antibody-dependent enhancement of the disease, vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease and the rapid spread of Omicron among the vaccinated leading to more cases, hospitalisations and deaths. The constant reinfection from an evolving cloud of variants leads to immunosuppression, secondary infections and superinfections. SARS-CoV-2 and mRNA vaccines can both induce cells in various parts of the body to produce the spike protein for months, leading to inflammation and adverse events. Repeated mRNA vaccinations increase IgG4 antibodies, induce partial immune tolerance and weaken the immune system. Because the vaccines did not prevent transmission and may have increased infection rates, the unvaccinated did not impose a negative externality on others, meaning there were no medical or ethical grounds for making vaccinations mandatory or for vaccine passports.
The populations of East Asia, Southeast Asia and Australasia may have had greater pre-existing immunity (from other coronaviruses) against wild-type SARS-CoV-2 due to their closer proximity to the origin of COVID-19, leading to low infection rates until Omicron. Global excess mortality, earlier largely involving COVID-19 and iatrogenic (treatment-related) harm, and later often related to cardiovascular issues, has continued to be significantly elevated since COVID-19 appeared, largely due to both COVID-19 and the vaccinations (directly, indirectly, in combination and over the short and longer-term) and the collateral damage caused by lockdowns.
A seasonal influenza-like illness became a pandemic of governmental overreach and collective hysteria. Lockdowns turned out to be the greatest health economics mistake in modern history, face masks served no useful purpose in the community, in schools or in healthcare, whilst vaccinations were likely somewhat effective against severe COVID-19 in the not-previously-infected elderly in 2021, but ultimately probably did more harm than good. It seems likely that we would have been better off doing nothing. Next time, we really should keep calm and carry on.
Dr. Martin Sewell is a quant researcher. This is a summary of his comprehensive new paper on COVID-19 and global policy responses. Follow him on X.
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It is irrelevant the whole situation was a response to the complete collapse of the financial system. You could even argue that the poison death shot put off the inevitable for a while. You have to understand the real origins of all of this otherwise you are just arguing about crap. The system is the origin of all of it. Once you track its movements you can see clearly what is coming next. All of this was abundantly obvious of autumn 2019. Don’t choose to switch your head off in the hope that it will be easier. It is a common mistake and it is punished by great torment.
100%
Agreed, and when do Governments’ give a toss about the elderly; only when it fits their narrative.
I am glad this is now being said out loud. It was totally obvious within a week of the first Lockdown that people weren’t dying in their 1000s and infections were falling. Covid had been in the country for months. The early spike in deaths were due to abysmal treatments from panicking doctors.
It was a scam from the outset.
Flying viruses? Still awaiting proof. I worked at the HSA – Rona Architect, migrated the reporting to AWS. The reports fed to the fake news and pharma-ment were contrived and not based on reality. The data was junk. I asked internally for proof of an isolated, purified and in situ (in a bat or from one) virus. I then asked for proof of transference from a bat to human -eating, having sex, licking it, petting it. Nothing. Still waiting. Still have the FOIs. They have nothing.
100%
Undertakers were reporting a drop in business.
Says it all, really.
He mentions that Australasia that they probably had immunity to Covid etc because of the proximity, but what about because of SARS 1.
You are already dead. If you avoided it yourself then probably a few of your family and friends are riddled with cancer and that is just a tiny fraction. Knowing the truth will probably make you collapse in despair. This is the nature of warfare. Knowing that they want you dead. You need to learn to smile even if they took your children to the morgue. In that spirit you can find resistance. In the victim spirit you will just feed their vampiric energies.
Yep, told you so…feel like this is now just a distraction….
It is just a big mistake based on normalcy bias. They are tyring to ramp up the bird flu now. I don’t really care who goes along with it and who doesn’t given the widespread and unacknowlged weakness that pervades now, If you could look in the mirror and see how screwed you are as a population. It is scary how unhealthy and ill-clad people look in England these days. If you are up for a bit of a squabble then I wouldn’t expect any support. When the cabal really takes over you will see Islam as light relief. You really don’t understand the totalitarian nature of what is coming.
Just maybe you are granting the cabal more power than they have, it is an illusion.
You belittle yourself by even arguing against ‘facemasks’. So some guy puts on a piece of cloth when he goes into a shop, takes it off and puts it in his pocket and then puts in on again in anoher shop. This is breaking every rule of infection control in an instant. It is creating an infection-rich environment, obviously. It is not dignified to argues against such nonsense. People discarded these masks by throwing them in the street. If you argue against them as if they were ever a serious proposition then you are simply reinforcing the idea that there was someting rational about this, at least worth arguing about. You need to develop a greater sense of self-esteem otherwise these monsters will just walk all over you.
A good summary, and worth keeping in a library, before they try to march on and ignore it. After all, a lot of the political tactics are in common use for other matters that are worth criticising. Looking on the bright side, at least it demonstrated what can be done to us by the usual suspects.
Yes something Lord Sumption & Hitchens warned about in the early days.
Yep, that was the conclusion I reached around 2022 (I know, I know, I’m a slow learner).
The lockdowns, the vaccines, the thrashing of the economy, the psychological damage to kids – it was all for nothing. We would have been better off doing nothing.
But – it was an eye opener, my friends. We lived in an illusion: we thought we had unalienable rights, we were safe, totalitarian systems couldn’t happen here. We were wrong. So, let’s not stop at the negative. We learnt something.
Yes the fascists got rid of Parliament, magna carta, all your ‘rights’ in about 5 minutes. And the sheeple complied – happily. Pharma-ment laughing as they extended the Corona fascist enabling act. Money pouring into their accounts.
when I mentioned what they were doing in New Zealand a mate just asked. “how are they getting away with it”……Good question when you thought there were long standing systems in place that protects the Western individual. it was an eye-opener.
We need to STOP engaging with this narrative… Its done, we know the score, dont give it time, its here to distract you..
Isn’t it always a good idea to put a mark in the sand? When the lunacy started, a few of us already knew all of the above, hence the Daily Sceptic came into being. But a remarkably high percentage of the population didn’t figure it out, and still really haven’t
I have always maintained that if Covid hadn’t made the news it wouldn’t have been noticed. Health services would’ve coped like they do on a bad flu year and life would’ve gone on as normal.
Unfortunately you got the perfect storm. Centrist technocrats saw it as an opportunity to reassert their ‘expertise’ which the public had long since treated with appropriate contempt. The far left saw it as a chance to paint the populist right as uncaring and happy to let people die. The MSM saw it as a chance to become relevant again offering ghastly clickbait featuring ridiculously inflated death tolls and interviews with (now very rich) scientists touting their laughable modelling as “following the science.” Health services, always with its insatiable appetite for money, seized the opportunity to wolf down the next twenty years health budget in one go.
But if you really want to look for the prime movers in what was in all but name a global coup d’état then don’t think opportunistic scientists, jaded hacks, amoral politicians or big pharmaceuticals – just follow the money.
Just try to remember the unstoppable force that brought in lockdowns, social distancing, masks and dodgy vaccines. That’s right… Silicon Valley.
Remember the defunding, deplatforming, blatant libelling of rational dissenters even with decades of expertise in virology (Luc Montagnier was practically labelled as suffering senility on Wikipedia). Meanwhile Covid doomsayers with little experience in the field of epidemiology like Hilary Jones were lionised as gods and landed lucrative advertising deals on the back of this (who can forget not being able to scroll any page without seeing his grinning mug hawking hearing aids and other tat?).
Yes, it was Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter (not X), Microsoft and Amazon who kept seeding this storm and it is they that made the staggering amounts of money from it.
It is a warning from history. Trump has been given a clear mandate from the people, many who suffered most from the Covid coup. He must use it to dismantle this star chamber or risk that history repeating itself many times in the next few decades.
You have missed out the star players….NATO & DOD. ‘Countermeasures’ is a military term and they were responding to what is thought to be a Bioweapon. And as mentioned above, the fractional reserve banking system needs large inflated money printing, and ‘Covid’ came at the perfect time.
“In the autumn of 2019 a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, began to circulate widely but at a low level.”
There’s still zero unequivocal evidence this actually happened. Remember, without the fraudulent use of the PCR test and the circular pseudo-scientific methods of ‘virology’, there would be no pandemic.
And remember the definition of it’s name: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)…… Arguably false for most of us – more like another Coronavirus with less marketable names, like OCE43 etc.
Indeed so – as I, and many, many others said at the time: https://www.hughwillbourn.com/post/cc6-podcast-ramble-and-catch-up
Well, d’Uh..
At the time, lots of people never imagined that the government could be so audacious as to act against the people in full sight and shamelessness. We’re all a lot smarter now…
I beg to disagree. A few of us might be, maybe as many as 4m, but in July a majority of Brit’s voted for parties which are peddling the myth of net zero, which will bankrupt the UK
”Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice…….”
Yeah listening to most of my friends they are still fully paid up covidians and would no doubt turn to all the mask wearing (anti) social distancing and plod along to get their jabs if told to at the drop of a hat.
Case in point. I was at an old works do the other night and my ex boss said “I got Covid in the summer”. “Oh” says I “and how did you know it was Covid?” “Because I took the test” he says. “And why did you do that?” I asked. “Because I wanted to know”. He replied. “And why did you want to know?” I enquired. Reply there came none
And no telling him the tests are useless would probably have sent him apocalyptic!
Less people seem to be getting Boosters now, even for those that think it was all a giant mistake in every Western country in Lockstep.
It wasn’t “a mistake.”
It’s possible that the release of the virus from Wuhan was a mistake, but nothing else was. It was deliberate policy: it was an experiment in CONTROL and to advance implementation of The Great Reset.
Weren’t all the countries that followed in ‘Lockstep’ NATO countries? So there is that…
Of course we would have been better doing nothing.
We had already set up and paid for an organisation to tell us that……in 1992.
‘It is therefore arguable that in the case of infections like coronavirus or rhinovirus colds, which are normally quickly self-limited, the best approach would be to relieve the patient’s discomfort and disability and leave their immune system to take care of the virus.’
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016635429290032Z
But some total no hoper careerists started shouting ‘Fire!’ from the rooftops:
‘I was asked to speak first. I was in the spotlight. The truth could not be sugar-coated. ‘We are about six weeks into this outbreak and this virus can now clearly spread between humans,’ I told the audience, explaining it could be passed on like influenza, through coughing and sneezing. ‘It is not SARS. The virus is in a similar family as SARS but this looks different … and the difference is probably it is easier to pass between human beings. I think we can expect many more cases in China and many more cases in other parts of the world.’ 23 Jan 2020
Farrar had written a book about Ebola. He knew next to nothing about Influenza Like Illnesses…..but shouted ‘Panic!’ at the top of his voice anyway. It worked well for him. He trousered massive bonuses from his employer, the Wellcome Trust, and then legged it to tax free Geneva….to become the W.H.O. Chief Scientist. In a work of fiction, that is right up there with Enid Blyton: ‘and, with one bound, he was free…’
Meanwhile those who really knew what they were talking about were ignored:
‘So the 20,000 cases in China is probably only the severe cases; the folks that actually went to the hospital and got tested. The Chinese healthcare system is very overwhelmed with all the tests going through. So my thinking is this is actually not as severe a disease as is being suggested. The fatality rate is probably only 0.8%-1%. There’s a vast underreporting of cases in China. Compared to Sars and Mers we are talking about a coronavirus that has a mortality rate of 8 to 10 times less deadly to Sars to Mers. So a correct comparison is not Sars or Mers but a severe cold. Basically this is a severe form of the cold.’
Prof J. Nicholls Univ. of Hong Kong 06 Feb 2020
The rest is history:
‘…there’s now a whole bunch of these seroprevalence studies have been done that replicate from around the world what we found. The typical finding in these seroprevalence studies is that for people that are under the age of 70, there’s a 0.05% mortality risk. So 99.95% survival after infection for people under 70. For people over 70 it’s 5% mortality. So 95% mortality, 95% survival, a huge difference. It essentially changes smoothly with age. So roughly speaking, I’m 53, my infection fatality rate from these studies is something like 0.2%, 99.8% survival if I get infected.’
‘…you can have a relatively few people with immunity and you won’t see it growing. So herd immunity is not a synonym for zero COVID. I think Hancock, I think, that’s the mistake he made there.
The other thing about herd immunity with these disease is, it was clear in October of that year of 2020, and even more clear now that if you are infected, you actually gain substantial protection against re-infection.
So there was a study that was just released actually recently, but verifies a whole long line of studies. At one year… This is out of Italy. At one year after infection, 0.3% are reinfected. So you’re infected, you recover from COVID and within the context of the full year, three out of 1,000 get reinfected. And almost always, it’s less severe than the first time, because your body still remembers how to fight it off…’
Jay Bhattacharya Oct 2021
The fox, though, will shortly be in the hen coop….at least in the good ol’ U.S.A.
That might make Lady Hallett’s inquiry findings look absurd, risible; the Baroness a laughing stock…..unless Lady H conducts some serious revisions……
Does anyone remember Dr. John Ioannidis’, Professor Stanford University, infection fatality rates way back in 2020? Negligible for the majority of those under 70.
I still don’t know one person hospitalised or died from covid. I do know quite a few people who through medical negligence suffered pneumonia and were denied antibiotic. No doubt many in care homes died for this exact reason. Also hospital protocol for PCR positive “covid” pts often was ventilation, midazolam and morphine. In the USA remdesivir was also administered, shutting down kidneys and liver.
There are those who do not believe there was a novel virus. Dr. Mike Yeadon, a former scientist researcher of respiratory diseases at Pfizer is one.
why did every country lockdown, mask, social distance, shut schools and businesses, stand six feet apart, limit visitation to loved ones in hospital and nursing homes and administer an ineffective and unsafe covid vaxx ALL IN UNISON? Why were the media in unison around the world? The vaxx was “safe and effective”, you must wear a mask etc.
Why were gov’ts dragging out their gov’t “experts” each afternoon to really say nothing, but to ensure compliance and fear.
This was not a pandemic, it was a plandemic. And boy did it work. Scared the pants off everyone, causing complete compliance by the sheeple. It continues. There is a higher power that put this prank into play. Cost people their lives and livelihoods and yet not a word of apology, a word of acknowledgement that mistakes were made. Our world has been changed forever and not because of a “novel” virus.
warnings to prepare for the next pandemic is now meant to instill more fear and more compliance. What number covid vaxx is the UK dishing out? Ten? Surely people will wake up. There is no mention of all the people who made millions on this prank. Let’s name them in the future. Let’s name any government scientific officer who gave the public false information. There are many.
I like watching Russell Brand and how he injects his dark humour into these topics, but he always mentions “since the pandemic”…..He of all people should know there was no discernible pandemic, only the WHO mendaciously altering the definition of a pandemic just in time for the Global Coup de etat. I always put Plan in front of pandemic.
I worked all the way through the Covid years as, as a Plumbing & Heating engineer, I was seen as a ‘key worker’. I still think lockdowns, masks and the measures put in place were ridiculously nonsensical and needlessly authoritarian. However, I caught Covid while working at a customer’s house in November 2020 and got really ill with it. At that time I was just over 50 and super fit, attending CrossFit classes 5 times a week. As I tested positive for covid I had self isolated and quickly had what I can only describe as really bad flu. I’d had flu once before in my life when I was 19 years old, but this was much, much worse.
My condition deteriorated over a 9 day period before I rang for an ambulance. My oxygen levels were at 85 and I was rushed into hospital. Tests showed I had covoid pneumonia, which is different to normal pneumonia, as instead of fluid on your lungs it’s a thick mucus inter dispersed with blood clots.
I spent 8 days in hospital where a course of steroids, antibiotics and oxygen sorted me right out.
The vast majority of people were not affected by Covid in any way, shape or form, even in its more virulent strains. My wife and kids had no symptoms whatsoever. For those who did get ill, Covid was survivable, as long as medical intervention was sought and (this is very important) the CORRECT treatment was given. Respirators killed a hell of a lot of people, whereas oxygen through tubes that are kind of clipped to your nostrils worked wonders, along with steroids and antibiotics.
So yes, Covid did hospitalise people, but did that warrant lockdowns and draconian rules and regulations? I would argue not.
Never in the field of scams has so much been inflicted on so many by so few.
This says it all
https://rumble.com/v5taxsk-silver-bullet-dr-yeadon.html
” The vaccination exhibits negative efficacy for the first two weeks, probably due to immunosuppression, which increases cases, hospitalisations and deaths.”
As we all remember (at least on here!) that those deaths were classed as “unvaccinated” deaths. Such was the mendacity. I caught some of SStarmers speech on the radio saying how “Covid” caught us out and we have to prepare for future scenarios — I thought eye eye, something to be wary of there!
Something else mentioned on the BBC this morning was how the NHS was under extreme pressure from multiple viruses such as Covid, RSA and the Flu…..Didn’t we Lock down the whole country for just one of those illnesses mentioned! Also, I thought we “saved” the NHS in 2020/21.
Respectfully, Martin, it is increasingly clear that destroying the economy was one of the many stacked functions of the lockdowns. It wasn’t an unfortunate side-effect, it was one of the goals.
Also with reducing life expectancy, increasing state power, and reducing individual and national sovereignty.
And so these trends continue.
Mistakes were not made.
Still maintain we got covid in October 2019 following seeing Friday night is music night 80s at the Coliseum London and a walk round Chinatown. Never a cough like it before or since.
In the opening paragraph he says “Next Time” we should do nothing ! There wasn’t a “This Time” I’m confused
The work has been published as a Kindle book.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0DRDFLL5X