Massive Johns Hopkins study: Lockdowns, masks, closures did NOT reduce death

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins University conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of thousands of studies to determine whether or not there is empirical evidence to support the belief that "lockdowns" reduce COVID-19 mortality.

They concluded that such policies are "ill-founded" and should be "rejected."

"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 the abstract. "In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument."

The meta-analysis, titled "A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality," began by identifying 18,590 studies that potentially could support the belief that lockdowns reduce COVID-19 mortality.

"After three levels of screening, 34 studies ultimately qualified. Of those 34 eligible studies, 24 qualified for inclusion in the meta-analysis," the researchers wrote.

They then divided the studies into three groups, lockdown stringency index studies, shelter-in-place-order studies and specific non-pharmaceutical intervention studies.

They defined "lockdowns" as "the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention," meaning government policies restricting people's regular activities, such as limiting movement, closing schools and businesses, and banning international travel.

They found lockdowns in Europe and the United States reduced COVID mortality by only 0.2% on average and shelter-in-place orders by an average of 2.9%. There was no "broad-based evidence" showing non-pharmaceutical interventions had any noticeable effect on COVID mortality.

The conclusions by the Johns Hopkins researchers are consistent with other studies of hard data from around the world showing the lockdowns and other severe mitigation measures didn't stop the typical waxing and waning of a respiratory virus pandemic.

And the unintended consequences have been documented by the World Health Organisation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As WND reported in December, the CDC warned that measles has become a growing global threat because of disruptions to childhood vaccinations caused by the lockdowns.

The WHO, in its latest malaria report, said in December that amid "disruptions" to health services during the COVID-19 pandemic, malaria cases and deaths rose significantly in 2020 compared to the previous year.

Stanford Medical School professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who has spotlighted the unintended consequences of COVID lockdowns, commented on the WHO report in December.

"The lockdowners who championed the policies that caused the sharp increase in malaria deaths in 2020 will do their best to ignore this because they are blind to collateral harms from the lockdowns, especially if they befall the poor worldwide," he said on Twitter.

Bhattacharya, with epidemiologists Martin Kulldorff of Harvard and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford, is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, arguing for protecting the vulnerable while allowing those with little risk to go about their business.

In an interview in October on the "Uncommon Knowledge" podcast with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, he said the unintended consequences of the lockdowns are immense. They include the estimated 100 million people thrown into poverty, the missing treatments for cancer and other serious diseases, and the 1 in 4 young adults who reported to the CDC that they have considered suicide during the pandemic.

The lockdowns favoured the rich, the "laptop class," he said, who had one-third the death rate of the poor. Bhattacharya said it was "almost a reversed focus protection; we exposed the vulnerable and protected the well-to-do young."