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Lockdowns Do Not Reduce Deaths, Meta-Analysis of Empirical Studies Finds

by Will Jones
30 January 2022 7:00 AM

Lockdown restrictions had little to no effect on the number of COVID-19 deaths, a new meta-analysis of empirical studies has found. The analysis, entitled “A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality“, written by Professor Steve H. Hanke, Professor Lars Jonung and Jonas Herby, has been published as a working paper by the prestigious Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health and the Study of Business Enterprise.

The authors screened 18,590 studies to find those eligible for inclusion, and reviewing 1,048 of them, identified 24 which met their eligibility criteria of being based on empirical data (not modelling) of mortality during the pandemic. They restricted their review to studies which assessed the impact of mandatory lockdowns i.e., non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), but not guidance or voluntary measures. Their preferred measure was excess mortality rather than Covid mortality as it overcomes issues with the definition of a Covid death, but they noted only one study looked at that variable.

The 24 eligible studies were separated into three groups – lockdown stringency studies, shelter-in-place-order (SIPO) studies, and specific non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) studies – and an analysis of each group supported the conclusion that lockdowns have had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.

Stringency index studies found that lockdowns in Europe and the United States reduced COVID-19 mortality by just 0.2% on average, while studies of shelter-in-place (stay-at-home) orders found they only reduced Covid mortality by 2.9% on average. Studies of specific NPIs (lockdown vs no lockdown, facemasks, closing non-essential businesses, border closures, school closures, limiting gatherings) also found no broad-based evidence of noticeable effects on COVID-19 mortality. While closing non-essential businesses seems to have had some effect (reducing Covid mortality by 10.6%) – mainly related to the closure of bars and pubs – border closures, school closures and limiting gatherings reduced Covid mortality by just 0.1%, 4.4%, and actually increased it by 1.6%, respectively.

Since lockdowns have had little to no public health benefits, and given they have imposed enormous economic and social costs – reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, undermining liberal democracy – the authors conclude in no uncertain terns that “lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument”.

They note this finding is in line with the World Health Organisation Writing Group, which in 2006 stated: “Reports from the 1918 influenza pandemic indicate that social-distancing measures did not stop or appear to dramatically reduce transmission… In Edmonton, Canada, isolation and quarantine were instituted; public meetings were banned; schools, churches, colleges, theaters, and other public gathering places were closed; and business hours were restricted without obvious impact on the epidemic.” And also that “forced isolation and quarantine are ineffective and impractical”.

Their findings are contrary to the forecasts in epidemiological studies such as those of Neil Ferguson and his team at Imperial College London, but they suggest this is owing to faults in the modelling. More generally, they observe that studies that claim to find an effect are invariably based on modelling or cover too short a time period to gain a full picture.

They write they were motivated to undertake their analysis in part by the striking lack of correlation between lockdown stringency and Covid mortality in the first wave. Given the large effects predicted by models such as Ferguson’s (up to 98%), they note that at least a simple negative correlation would have been expected. Instead, what correlation there was was positive – the more stringent countries and U.S. states had on average (slightly) more deaths (see chart at top). While some argue this may be because the worst affected countries responded by locking down harder, the authors point out Sebhatu and colleagues showed that Government policies are strongly driven by “the policies initiated in neighbouring countries rather than by the severity of the pandemic in their own countries”. This means it is “not the severity of the pandemic that drives the adoption of lockdowns, but rather the propensity to copy policies initiated by neighbouring countries”.

It isn’t just the raw data but several studies which find a positive correlation between lockdowns and COVID-19 mortality (meaning the strictest had more deaths). The authors suggest this counterintuitive result may be due to people being confined to their homes infecting family members, with a higher viral load causing more severe illness.

They suggest several reasons that lockdowns don’t have the effect expected by the modelling. Their main explanation is voluntary behaviour change – both in limiting contacts, so the lockdown is unnecessary, and in ignoring the mandate, so it is ineffective.

When a pandemic rages, people believe in social distancing regardless of what the Government mandates. So, we believe that Allen is right, when he concludes: “The ineffectiveness [of lockdowns] stemmed from individual changes in behaviour: either non-compliance or behavior that mimicked lockdowns.” … Herby reviews studies which distinguish between mandatory and voluntary behavioral changes. He finds that – on average – voluntary behavioral changes are 10 times as important as mandatory behavioral changes in combating COVID-19. If people voluntarily adjust their behaviour to the risk of the pandemic, closing down non-essential businesses may simply reallocate consumer visits away from ‘nonessential’ to ‘essential’ businesses, as shown by Goolsbee and Syverson, with limited impact on the total number of contacts.

They note that even with lockdowns and distancing, much contact continues – and some of the lowest mortality countries, Denmark, Finland and Norway, actually permitted the highest amount of contact in the first lockdown, allowing people to “go to work, use public transport, and meet privately at home”.

Lastly, they point once again to the counterproductive nature of some restrictions in confining people to indoor environments, noting they “find some evidence that limiting gatherings was counterproductive and increased COVID-19 mortality”.

With the empirical evidence stacked against the effectiveness of lockdowns, do you think the governments which engaged in this catastrophic error of groupthink will ever admit their mistakes, or will they forever hide behind their fanciful modelling? Maybe after an election or two, we could hope for some proper evidence-based re-appraisal.

Find the full paper here, which is of course worth reading in full.

Tags: Covid deathsDeathsLockdown costLockdown harmsLockdowns

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38 Comments
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Annie
Annie
3 years ago

Ironic that the study comes from Johns Hopkins. The institution is firmly in the grip of Covid mania.

https://covidinfo.jhu.edu/information-for-undergraduate-students/

32
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  Annie

Good spot. Those physicians need to heal themselves, starting with their irrational terror.

10
0
JeremyP99
JeremyP99
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

There are always dissenters even in such places.

2
0
olaffreya
olaffreya
3 years ago

Stating the bleeding obvious springs to mind.

31
0
kate
kate
3 years ago

This is the best analysis of what is really happening that I have found. Please share details of this book.
This book contends that since the financial collapse of 2008, populations in many countries have become restive in the face of extreme inequality and diminishing life chances. In a digital economy, one to two billion people will soon be superfluous, but they are not likely to remain sitting on their hands; in many parts of the world their resistance has begun. The Western capitalist elites have lost the capacity to engage their respective peoples in an equitable social contract and have resorted to stoking fear — from the terrorism scare and the Russian threat to the COVID infliction, with more variants coming on line — as a formula for curtailing protest and maintaining power.
It analyzes the social forces driving this process: the US national security state and its intelligence apparatus, the IT giants spun off from it, and the large media conglomerates that have joined forces to create a comprehensive surveillance system of Orwellian dimensions The production of disease threats is amplified by the Gates Foundation and other public international organizations including the WHO, along with the pharmaceutical industries, foresee unprecedented profit in plans to inoculate the world population with experimental gene therapies sold as vaccines. Ideas on using a pandemic to initiate a worldwide state of siege have matured until the need for collective intervention — the threat of a new financial meltdown and the need to remove Trump — prompted global elites to seize the day.
The virus threat may not be an idle one, given the Pentagon’s biowarfare infrastructure which for decades has been producing gain-of-function viruses in laboratories the world over, as have a wide range of countries.
The book is the first to offer an extensively documented, comprehensive analysis of all aspects of this real and embellished threat that is already ushering in a global transformation.

Yet it ends on a note of hope, arguing that the very IT revolution that enabled the siege holds out the promise of a deepening democracy as the global public surges past the gatekeepers, online and off.

https://www.claritypress.com/product/states-of-emergency-keeping-the-global-population-in-check

24
-3
kate
kate
3 years ago
Reply to  kate

Kees Van Der Pijl: The Virus Crisis is a Fraud & Cover for a Global Political Seizure of Power
Interview with the author.

https://rumble.com/vt8k14-kees-van-der-pijl-the-virus-crisis-is-a-fraud-and-cover-for-a-global-politi.html

16
-1
True Spirit of America Party
True Spirit of America Party
3 years ago
Reply to  kate

Indeed, it was never really about a virus. It was always about power and control above all else.

0
0
Cristi.Neagu
Cristi.Neagu
3 years ago
Reply to  kate

The Western capitalist elites

And that’s where you lost me. And then you start talking about equity as if it’s a good thing.

Those “capitalist elites” are very, very busy promoting socialism and equity, and telling everyone how awful socialism is. This is why we keep finding ourselves into the same hellhole over and over again. A bunch of socialists come along, telling everyone how great socialism is. People buy it cause they have never learnt any lessons from history. A few million people die. Then a bunch of socialists come along, blame it all on capitalism, and get everyone hooked on socialism.

STOP GIVING POWER TO GOVERNMENTS! STOP PROMOTING SOCIALISTS SYSTEMS WHICH ARE BASED ON GIVING POWER TO THE GOVERNMENT!

16
-1
Bolloxed Britannia
Bolloxed Britannia
3 years ago

John Hopkins…An intrinsic part of the access of globocap evil.
“Lockdowns don’t work”, two years, two years 😐
Further comment is futile.

23
0
BeBopRockSteady
BeBopRockSteady
3 years ago

And it’s not like such widespread quarantine systems were not known to be problematic before Covid, they were warned against pre-Covid:

“Quarantine. As experience shows, there is no basis for recommending quarantine either of groups or individuals. The problems in implementing such measures are formidable, and secondary effects of absenteeism and community disruption as well as possible adverse consequences, such as loss of public trust in government and stigmatization of quarantined people and groups, are likely to be considerable”

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.552.1109&rep=rep1&type=pdf

20
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True Spirit of America Party
True Spirit of America Party
3 years ago
Reply to  BeBopRockSteady

But instead, the powers that be panicked and threw the hard-won wisdom of the ages out the window like so much garbage in March 2020. And as they say, the rest is history…

0
0
stewart
stewart
3 years ago

Unless you do it like China and NZ. Then it works much the same way as holding your breath under water works to stop yourself from drowning.

32
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  stewart

To this day I’m still seeing chattering-classes loons demanding a synchronised, mass internment of every human being.

“If everybody does it, all at once, we’ll have zero covid!” they cry.

Curiously, I’ve yet to find one who will even engage on the issue of who needs to be exempted from this total house arrest scheme. Obviously not the police, or fire, or ambulance, or medics. Oh, and not farmers or vets, or food and medicine delivery. Or distribution or supply of goods, fuel, gas and electricity, or vehicle maintenance and recovery or shipping and air freight and the administration of all of that: got to clean up and account for it all.

When it comes down to it, there are a lot of genuinely essential jobs. And yet work-from-home zealots still think we can all hide under our blankets for 2 weeks, because they can.

26
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snoozle
snoozle
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

The zero covidians are essentially pursuing a policy that might occur to a 15 year old: that if everyone has no contact with each other for two weeks then all communicable diseases will disappear. In the past, luckily, policy makers did not listen to secondary school students and actually thought about the implications of such a policy and the excemptions that you mention. The question is, why did we listen to the secondary school level ideas this time?

18
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago
Reply to  snoozle

Perhaps because the same amount of “thinking” goes into the global collectivist (aka communist) policies being peddled by Davos and Common Purpose.

Socialism has always worked, comrade (next time). All it requires is for Alice to toil from sunrise to sunset for the good of Bob, and reap none of the rewards of her own efforts. What possible problem could there be with that?

6
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X - In Search of Space
X - In Search of Space
3 years ago
Reply to  snoozle

The zero covidians are essentially pursuing a policy that might occur to a 15 year old

Yes, yes and thrice yes!

5
0
True Spirit of America Party
True Spirit of America Party
3 years ago
Reply to  X - In Search of Space

Indeed, it was literally inspired by a 14 year old high school student’s science project.

https://www.aier.org/article/the-2006-origins-of-the-lockdown-idea/

0
0
Vxi7
Vxi7
3 years ago
Reply to  snoozle

There’s a similar idea even adults sometimes can’t comprehend: “if we give 1 million dollars to everyone then we solve poverty”

2
0
True Spirit of America Party
True Spirit of America Party
3 years ago
Reply to  snoozle

In fact, that is precisely what happened. It was literally inspired by a 14 year old high school student’s science project:

https://www.aier.org/article/the-2006-origins-of-the-lockdown-idea/

0
0
tom171uk
tom171uk
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

And they can only because other people deliver things to them.

3
0
X - In Search of Space
X - In Search of Space
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

It can be so. All you have to do is imagine it – that’s all. Don’t get bogged down with reality and practicalities, it’s so defeatist.

This is why I have no time or regard for anything Labour, ‘liberal’, PC, woke etc – they all are just complete dreamers/fantasists.

3
0
True Spirit of America Party
True Spirit of America Party
3 years ago
Reply to  stewart

Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic also works as an analogy. Ditto for a finger in the dike to save Holland.

0
0
maverick999
maverick999
3 years ago

Tell us something we didn’t know!

6
0
loopDloop
loopDloop
3 years ago

Well, this is terrific news. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find my inbox full this morning of emails from all the people who told me lockdowns were a good thing this last two years, all of them profusely apologising for having called it so badly, and each of them candidly admitting that I was right and they were wrong. Here’s one from each of my family members, and all those friends I lost, and even a bloke from down the pub that one time. Gosh, I never thought that people would have enough generosity of spirit to admit down the road that all their hysterical fear-based thinking was grossly wide of the mark and caused all kinds of hardship, suffering and deprivation, for no good reason. Just goes to show.
/sarc off

Last edited 3 years ago by loopDloop
50
0
Arum
Arum
3 years ago
Reply to  loopDloop

I’m sure at some point Johnson said ‘The Science has changed’ – perhaps this is what he was thinking

2
0
wildman10
wildman10
3 years ago

Evidence-based reappraisal? No chance. The elites will just double down on the policy-based evidence-making they’ve bombarded us with over the last 2 years.

9
0
caipirinha17
caipirinha17
3 years ago

Unfortunately those who imposed the lockdowns also engineered a get out of jail free card to respond to these studies: they’ll say they were simply doing what the public wanted them to do.

15
0
ImpObs
ImpObs
3 years ago

Lockdowns Do Not Reduce Deaths
Because lockdowns don’t reduce the frequency of transfections.

5
0
Martin Frost
Martin Frost
3 years ago

I was just doing some cross referencing with the BBC news website. Their Covid news is all about the fall in Omicron cases having stalled and the dangers of Long Covid. Presumably reports from the Daily Sceptic are dismissed as “disinformation” . The BBC have even appointed a reporter with that title. It seems to me that even if it were proven beyond any (not just reasonable) doubt that lockdowns were a mistake, the BBC would refuse to accept it. Is it deliberate bias or are they simply delusional?

17
0
Username1
Username1
3 years ago
Reply to  Martin Frost

I believe the correct term is ‘delusional bias’.

5
0
Old Maid
Old Maid
3 years ago

As we are not permitted the ‘s’ word:

No stools, Sherlock.

Or perhaps:

No poo, Poirot

Or even:

No movements, Marlowe.

Sorry.

This is what we get from ‘prestigious’ institutions? A load of cobblers that we on here could have told them back in April 2020 and have been saying ever since.

13
0
CovidiotAntiMasker
CovidiotAntiMasker
3 years ago
Reply to  Old Maid

Free speech is the bedrock on which all our other freedoms rest. Toby Young.

4
0
Rogerborg
Rogerborg
3 years ago

Statement of the bleedin’ obvious. Unless you actually do a real CCP style literal lockdown and nail people into their homes, they’ll still shop (or die), and they’ll still meet up (or go mad).

Those clamouring the loudest for brutal home internment only mean for it to be inflicted on lesser anti-citizens. See our political, media and scientician classes for many examples, from Johnson and Starmer, through Burley and Morgan, to Pantsdown and Calderwood.

Nobody ever really believes that they or their circle are plague rats: that’s other people.

12
0
True Spirit of America Party
True Spirit of America Party
3 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Basically, you either do China, or you do Sweden. Anything in between is at best just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and will do far more harm than good.

0
0
A Heretic
A Heretic
3 years ago

News just in. Meta-analysis of empirical studies finds that bears do indeed s*** in the woods.

7
0
LonePatriot
LonePatriot
3 years ago

There Are Now 365 Studies that Prove the Efficacy of Ivermectin and HCQ in Treating COVID-19. Any hospital administrator who mandated the shots to employees to comply with the government mandate for Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement and who refused to allow alternative treatments to be tried, doctors who pushed their patients to take the EUA drug without giving fully informed consent, anyone who forcefully administered the shot, the AMA, AAP, Boards of Health, CDC, FDA, NIH, WHO, scientists who participated in the development, Big Pharma (Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, Astra Zeneca, et. al.), anyone who pushed the sick into nursing homes resulting in deaths, all must be arrested, prosecuted, tried and if found guilty sentenced to prolonged imprisonment and fines or death for intentional homicide. Get your ivermectin before it is too late! https://ivmpharmacy.com

2
0
Javy
Javy
3 years ago

All that needed to be said at the very beginning was something like ‘there’s a bit of a nasty flu doing the rounds at the moment’.

3
0
True Spirit of America Party
True Spirit of America Party
3 years ago

Of course lockdowns don’t really work. It was always a category error at best to assume that they would. In other news, water is wet and the sun rises in the east.

0
0

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