Letter to Baron Bethell #17

Of Idiotic Lockdowns

Letters from Vienna #194

Letter to Baron Bethell #17

Of Idiotic Lockdowns

Dear James,

I get worried when I hear you talk about the need for lockdowns “when future pandemics occur” (as though they were inevitable and as though Covid-19 had in fact been a “pandemic”, which it clearly wasn’t; it was a “testdemic”, caused by the wretched PCR tests!). This is extremely annoying, unprofessional and foolish on your part. What you should have long demanded of your civil servants was at least a portion of the innumerable studies on lockdowns. All showed that they were, as a means of “preventing transmission”, completely and utterly useless. And this we have known for an awfully LONG TIME!!!  

Even if you gave these studies no credence whatsoever you should have applied common sense. It’s fair enough if you argue that your poor decisions were due to the fact that you were completely and utterly out of touch with reality but to be frank: both you and I should have enough experience by now that we should be able to see through the BS, and lockdowns have always been pure BS.

At best the lockdowns were a “novel experiment” at worst “murderous” and “revolutionary” (where have all your “conservative credentials” vanished to now?). There was NEVER an iota of justification for these ridiculous and idiotic measures, as all the evidence shows beyond any reasonable doubt.

Studies

One study states: “Overall, our meta-analysis fails to confirm that lockdowns have had a large, significant effect on mortality rates. Studies examining the relationship between lockdown strictness (based on the OxCGRT stringency index) find that the average lockdown in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% compared to a COVID-19 policy based solely on recommendations. Shelter-in-place orders (SIPOs) were also ineffective. They only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 2.9%.”

“Studies looking at specific NPIs (lockdown vs. no lockdown, facemasks, closing non-essential businesses, border closures, school closures, and limiting gatherings) also find no broad-based evidence of noticeable effects on COVID-19 mortality. However, closing non-essential businesses seems to have had some effect (reducing COVID-19 mortality by 10.6%), which is likely to be related to the closure of bars. Also, masks may reduce COVID-19 mortality, but there is only one study that examines universal mask mandates. The effect of border closures, school closures and limiting gatherings on COVID-19 mortality yields precision-weighted estimates of -0.1%, -4.4%, and 1.6%, respectively. Lockdowns (compared to no lockdowns) also do not reduce COVID-19 mortality.”[1]

This was NOT an isolated study. In December 2020 it was reported:

“Across America and Europe, many government officials are resuming lockdowns and tightening restrictions in the face of rising COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.

The collateral damage of lockdowns, which has been well documented, includes widespread

Poverty, depression, bankruptcy, and unemployment. Meanwhile, the benefits of lockdowns remain murky.”

“Several studies show there is little correlation between government restrictions and lower COVID mortality rates. Here are three of them.

1. The Lancet, July

A study published on July 21 in The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal founded in 1823, indicated that government lockdowns were ineffective.

Researchers collected data from the 50 countries with the most cases and found lockdowns were not associated with mortality reductions in critical COVID-19 cases, although factors such as obesity, smoking, and life expectancy were.

“...government actions such as border closures, full lockdowns, and a high rate of COVID-19 testing were not associated with statistically significant reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality,” the study concluded.

2. Frontiers in Public Health, November

Similarly, a study published by Frontiers in Public Health several months after The Lancet paper found neither lockdowns nor lockdown stringency were correlated with lower death rates. Researchers crunched data from 160 countries over the first 8 months of the pandemic, testing numerous factors—such as public health, demographics, government policy, economy, and environment—to determine how each correlated with COVID-19 mortality.

“Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate,” the researchers concluded.

3. Tel Aviv University Study, October

Research from Tel Aviv University published in October on the website medRxiv said that strict lockdowns may not save lives. Researchers analyzed mobility data collected from iPhones and found no statistical association between lockdown severity and the number of COVID-19 fatalities.

“We would have expected to see fewer Covid-19 fatalities in countries with a tighter lockdown, but the data reveals that this is not the case,” the researchers explained.”[2]

Another article I read (in the Torygraph no less!) is a good deal more critical:

“The Covid inquiry is being urged to investigate if health officials dismissed evidence of collateral deaths during lockdown after a whistleblower claimed that pathologists’ concerns were shut down.”

“Public Health England (PHE) “didn’t want to know” about collecting evidence of non-Covid deaths when the country was locked down or health services were disrupted, ranging from heart disease and malaria to suicide and domestic abuse, according to a senior scientist.”

“As the inquiry prepares to hold its first full public hearing next week, Prof Sebastian Lucas, who worked as a consultant pathologist at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, claimed that PHE was not interested in what he described as “collateral deaths”.”

“PHE has since become the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) but was central to the response to the pandemic. Although it published data on excess deaths, this did not go beyond basic causes of death.”

“Prof Lucas wrote to Prof Kevin Fenton, the director of PHE London, on behalf of the London Inner South Jurisdiction Pathology Advisory Group.”

“He approached the agency in January 2021 as the UK entered its third lockdown, warning that collateral deaths as a result of the pandemic had not been recorded properly.”

“The group, which was headed up by a coroner, had identified several deaths that would not have happened had the NHS been functioning as normal. This included people who did not want to bother the doctor or who took their own lives because of lockdowns.”[3]

Perhaps most damning of all was a report from July 2022:

“The use of lockdowns to “quarantine” the general population of the United States in order to control the spread of an infectious disease is without precedent in the nation’s history. During previous pandemics, only the sick and infirm were quarantined while the rest of the population continued more or less as normal.”

“This “targeted protection” approach was recommended by medical professionals in the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020, demonstrating that alternatives to lockdowns existed and were well understood within the medical community. As recently as 2019 the World Health Organization advocated a similar approach in its recommendations for mitigating the risks of an influenza pandemic while making no mention of lockdown measures for the general population (WHO 2019). Indeed, the WHO report specifically states that quarantining exposed individuals is “not recommended because there is no obvious rationale for this measure” (see their Tables 1 and 4). Similarly, the Influenza pandemic preparedness action plan for the United States makes no mention of lockdowns and states that “...classical measures designed to reduce the risk of introduction and transmission of some infectious agents, such as clinical screening and quarantine at ports of entry, are not likely to be effective” (Strikas et al. 2002).”

“In their review of the available literature on influenza pandemic interventions, Inglesby et al. (2006) explicitly recommend against quarantine measures in the event of an influenza pandemic, for both sick and healthy individuals, because the societal costs are expected to far outweigh the benefits. They concluded, “[E]xperience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted.” These recommendations extend beyond preparing for and responding to influenza pandemics. In a report titled Preparedness for a High-Impact Respiratory Pathogen Pandemic, the authors conclude that quarantine is among the least effective non-pharmaceutical measures in containing disease spread (Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security 2019).”

“Thus, the lockdown measures implemented in 2020 by the majority of US states, as well as many countries worldwide, represented an unprecedented, large-scale experiment in infectious disease control. The all-cause mortality data we have analyzed allows us to test the hypothesis that lockdowns saved lives during the COVID pandemic. We find that these data are inconsistent with this hypothesis; states with lockdowns experienced more all-cause deaths than neighboring states without lockdowns. We therefore conclude that this experiment was a failure of public health policy and that lockdown measures should not be used during future disease outbreaks.”

“Our finding that all-cause mortality increased in states with lockdowns is consistent with the conclusions of Agrawal et al. (2021) who found statistically significant increases in excess mortality due to shelter-in-place orders in the US and in 43 countries. Similarly, Mulligan & Arnot (2022) estimate that there were 97K/year excess deaths due to lockdowns, with excess mortality distributed equally among all adult age groups, unlike COVID deaths which were most commonly attributed among the elderly.”

“Given the strong association between general-population lockdown impositions and increased all-cause mortality, demonstrated above (Figures 3-6), it is appropriate to venture hypotheses for the cause or causes of this association.”

“Obviously, privileged Americans, from the upper-middle and professional classes, did not die from staying at home. However, it is not unreasonable to postulate that the general-population lockdown regulations and orders are nonetheless proxies or statutory indicators of the degree of aggressiveness (including abandonment) with which the societal institutions in the state responded or reacted to the announced pandemic. These institutions would include schools, care homes, hospitals, clinics, disability services, day care facilities, police services, family and social services, and so on.”

“We tentatively advance this because it is entirely likely that the excess deaths associated with lockdowns are from pools of individuals at particularly high risk of suffering fatal consequences from large and negative disruptions in their lives and support networks. This will be true irrespective of the actual mechanistic cause of death, given the known association between both experienced stress and social isolation and disease severity and mortality, via the impact on the immune system (Ader and Cohen 1993; Cohen et al. 1991; Cohen et al. 1997; Cohen et al. 2007; Sapolsky 2005; Prenderville et al., 2015; Dhabhar 2014; Rancourt et al. 2021). Indeed, there is ample evidence that the lockdowns are associated with large increases in unemployment and a general worsening of mental health (e.g. Jewell et al. 2020, Czeisler et al. 2020).”[4]

But this letter is growing to be much too long…

Best,

Michael

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[1] A LITERATURE REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS

OF THE EFFECTS OF LOCKDOWNS ON

COVID-19 MORTALITY

Jonas Herby, Lars Jonung, and Steve H. Hanke

[2] https://fee.org/articles/3-studies-that-show-lockdowns-are-ineffective-at-slowing-covid-19/

[3] https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/other/health-officials-ignored-evidence-of-non-covid-deaths-during-lockdown/ar-AA1cnz37?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=15fee7f158964676ac575a2375501798&ei=24

[4] Evaluating the Effect of Lockdowns On All-Cause Mortality During the COVID Era: Lockdowns Did Not Save Lives, by John A. Johnson and Denis G. Rancourt