If you're a small business owner then you were aware, in March of 2020, that the lockdowns sweeping the country that month were having devastating effects on the health, stability, and happiness of your community and our entire nation.
If you were even a casual observer, meanwhile, you probably realized at some point over the last two years that those same lockdowns didn't seem to have much of an effect on the spread of the virus at all.
Well, great news: A group of scientists has finally realized the same thing!
Lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe had little or no impact in reducing deaths from COVID-19, according to a new analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
The lockdowns during the early phase of the pandemic in 2020 reduced COVID-19 mortality by about 0.2%, said the broad review of multiple scientific studies.
"We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality," the researchers wrote.
It is such a relief to see the ranks of well-funded, prestigious researchers at major legacy institutions come to the same conclusions that coffee shop owners and hourly laborers quickly realized after about the first nine days of lockdowns.
In the researchers' own bracing words:
[S]tringency index studies find that lockdowns in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average. .. [but] they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted.
Oof. So what's the solution?
In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.
