Throughout this lengthy, annoying pandemic, there have been no shortage of suggestions as to how best to keep ourselves safe…and no shortage of controversy over those suggestions either.
At the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, we were told not to wear masks. Some of this had to do with our inability to fully understand the virus on account of China’s downplaying of it, combined with a concern that a run on masks could leave hospitals struggling to procure the PPE for themselves.
Perhaps the most hotly debated topic during the pandemic had to do with lockdowns, however, and whether or not shutting down the world economy was doing more harm than good.
The latest study from John Hopkins University has revealed some stunning results.
Lockdowns during the first COVID-19 wave in the spring of 2020 only reduced COVID-19 mortality by .2% in the U.S. and Europe, according to a Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of several studies.
“While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted,” the researchers wrote. “In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”
The researchers – Johns Hopkins University economics professor Steve Hanke, Lund University economics professor Lars Jonung, and special advisor at Copenhagen’s Center for Political Studies Jonas Herby – analyzed the effects of lockdown measures such as school shutdowns, business closures, and mask mandates on COVID-19 deaths.
And that wasn’t all:
The researchers also examined shelter-in-place orders, finding that they reduced COVID-19 mortality by 2.9%.
Studies that looked at only shelter-in-place orders found they reduced COVID-19 mortality by 5.1%, but studies that looked at shelter-in-place orders along with other lockdown measures found that shelter-in-place orders actually increased COVID-19 mortality by 2.8%.
The study tends to fly in the face of the widespread belief of many world governments, and is sure to kick the hornets’ nest of COVID controversy one more time.
