Lockdowns Had Little Impact on Saving Lives, Experts Say
Amid the lifting of Covid lockdowns in Great Britain, Denmark, Israel and other countries, a study by three respected economists from reputable institutions in America, Sweden and Denmark found that lockdowns in Europe and the United States had little or no impact in reducing Covid-19 deaths.
Known as the “Johns Hopkins Study,” the work by Steve Hanke, Jonas Herby and Lars Jonung, published in Studies in Applied Economics January 2022 Edition, caused a stir as it sharply contradicted the widely pushed narrative that draconian restrictions were essential to saving lives during the pandemic.
“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. The report made it clear that while conferring negligible benefit on the public, the lockdowns did exact “devastating economic and social costs,” heightening numerous social ills.
The report detailed the spike in “unemployment, domestic violence and political unrest” prompted by prolonged lockdowns. The closures of schools and businesses, the banning of recreation and travel, and severe restriction of therapeutic and medical services, all contributed to the “undermining of liberal democracy,” the researchers said.
186 countries imposed bans on work, socialization, in-person schooling, travel and other restrictions, believing these bans would limit the spread of the disease, as advised by top health care experts across the world, a Washington Times article said.
Yet lockdowns reduced mortality in this country by a mere 0.2 percent, the researchers found—a number far exceeded by the tragic magnitude of deaths seen as by-products of the lockdowns, and the dysfunction and despair they triggered.
“Lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument,” the Johns Hopkins paper affirmed.
Expert Predictions Lie In Tatters
The authors of the study examined deaths that occurred early during the pandemic and determined that by May 20, 2020, the end of the lockdown period studied, a total of 97,081 Americans had died of Covid-19.
Expert predictions had warned that almost that many–98,000—would perish without lockdowns, and Americans were urged to make sacrifices “for the public good.” But the predicted saving power of lockdowns now lies in tatters.
The Johns Hopkins team said it evaluated “any government mandate that directly restrict peoples’ possibilities, such as policies that limit internal movement, close schools and businesses, and ban international travel.” For almost all of those policies, the authors reported “no broad-based evidence of noticeable effects on Covid-19 mortality.”
In fact, some of the studies even suggested shelter-in-place orders even increased the threat of the contagion, forcing people to stay home with vulnerable family members.
Despite the overall findings, the team did note some evidence that closing bars helped to reduce deaths. “Closing nonessential 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,” they said.
“Overall, we conclude that lockdowns are not an effective way of reducing mortality rates during a pandemic,” researchers Steve Hanke, Jonas Herby, and Lars Jonung wrote, after conducting a “meta-analysis” of dozens of studies that examined Covid-19 mortality rates.
“Lockdowns may isolate an infected person at home with his/her family where he/she risks infecting family members with a higher viral load, causing more severe illness,” the researchers found. “In addition, lockdowns have limited peoples’ access to safe outdoor places such as beaches, parks, and zoos. Or by enforcing outdoor mask mandates or strict outdoor restrictions, they pushed people to meet at less safe (indoor) places.”
Last month, the United States ranked 20th in deaths per million, of all countries in the world. Today, according to current statistics, the picture is even bleaker: the U.S. is ranked 18th out of 225 countries listed for the highest deaths per million.
Society Paid Heavy Price
Dr. Markary analyzed the Johns Hopkins study’s findings that saw a reduction of Covid deaths by 0.2 percent by the spring of 2020, after lockdowns were implemented.
“Now let’s compare that 0.2 percent number, which turns out to be about 1,800 individuals, to the number of non-Covid deaths in the United States during the same time frame,” he said in a Fox News appearance.
He explained that from May 2020 to April 2021, the U.S. recorded 100,306 drug overdose deaths, a 28.5% increase from the 78,056 deaths that were recorded in the previous 12-month period, according to CDC data. There were thousands of other deaths from deferred cancer care, self-harm and other side effects of lockdowns.
A study from the National Commission on Covid-19 and Criminal Justice last year found that domestic violence incidents increased 8.1% in the U.S. after lockdown orders were issued.
“These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are marginal at best,” the researchers in the Johns Hopkins University study wrote. “Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument.”
Republicans say the new report proves that Dr. Anthony Fauci and his claim that pandemic restrictions saved ‘millions’ are not to be trusted. “‘The fact that we shut down when we did, and the rest of the world did, has saved hundreds of millions of infections and millions of lives,” Fauci said in June 2020, offering no data to support his contention.
“Bad judgment and poor leadership from our nation’s health agencies have caused most Americans to live with an unhealthy fear of Covid-19. There is no doubt we need a new approach,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, told Daily Mail upon review of the new Johns Hopkins research. ‘That new approach should not include Dr. Fauci – American’s don’t trust him and he has lost his reputation. We must stop the obsession with Covid, stop living in fear and move forward.”
“I hope we’ll learn from this the study,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said on Fox News. “There was no correlation between any of the mandates the government put in place and any change in the incidence of the disease.’
Recalling how Fauci misled the country about the saving power of lockdowns, Rand said, “I don’t think Dr. Fauci will ever apologize or admit he was wrong to the country, but we need to have people like him removed from office because they’ve been so wrong on so much policy.’
The Lancet: Vaccine Mandates Should be Recalled
The unraveling of the “science” behind Covid-lockdowns comes amid the puncturing of another Covid myth by the influential British medical journal, The Lancet.
As reported by WND, The Lancet ran an article by a University of Colorado infectious disease scientist who concluded that vaccine mandates don’t work, in light of studies finding the vaccines are not stopping transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Dr. Carlos Franco-Paredes, of the University of Colorado’s Division of Infectious Diseases, wrote that “the impact of vaccination on community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 appeared to be not significantly different from the impact among unvaccinated people.”
“The scientific rationale for mandatory vaccination in the USA relies on the premise that vaccination prevents transmission to others,” wrote the Colorado infectious diseases expert. “Yet, reports of Covid-19 breakthrough infections among fully vaccinated health-care workers in Israel demand we reassess compulsory vaccination policies that lead to the firing of our own unvaccinated health care workers.”
Dr. Franco-Paredes cited a British study published last October that found that “people vaccinated against Covid-19 were as likely to spread the Delta variant to members of their household as those who had not been vaccinated.”
A similar study cited an investigation by the CDC of an outbreak of Covid in a Texas prison that found there was “no difference in the presence of infectious virus in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.”
“In light of this data,” Franco-Paredes wrote, “the current evidence suggests that current mandatory vaccination policies might need to be reconsidered. Workers should be hired and companies and public health officials who fired them should apologize,” he wrote, citing Dr. Markary’s recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
“Public-health officials ruined many lives by insisting that workers with natural immunity to Covid-19 be fired if they weren’t fully vaccinated. But after two years of accruing data, the superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear,” Dr. Makary said. “It’s time to reinstate those employees with an apology.”
Media Silence
Although the usual fact-checkers tried to find flaws in the Johns Hopkins paper, most American mainstream media outlets, apparently realizing the futility of trying to challenge the rigorously conducted study, took refuge in silence.
Why did the media see fit “to ignore a reputable university’s study that lockdowns didn’t work?” wondered the Daily Mail. Such vital information should have made headlines yet “was nowhere to be found on the New York Times, Washington Post, ABC News or other liberal media websites.”
“Johns Hopkins [University] itself did not even put out a press release about this study, and if you look at the media coverage, it’s one of the biggest stories in the world today, yet certain media outlets have not even covered it,’ Dr. Martin Markay, a professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University, told Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
After having poured so much ink into shaming Republican-led states for implementing only loose restrictions and permitting gatherings and events deemed by critics as “super-spreaders,” liberal media organs were suddenly silent on the subject, apparently at a loss to defend their dogma.
Markary slammed corporate media for its wall of silence, suggesting in a Fox News appearance that they “may already have written their own narrative” on the effectiveness of Covid lockdowns, and are unwilling to deviate from it.
Covid Vaccines and The Unknown
As pillars of Covid doctrine begin to crumble, pathologist Ryan Cole of Garden City, Idaho, one of the panel members at the recent Senate Subcommittee Hearing on vaccines, called attention in a later podcast to a startling laboratory phenomenon he’s been witnessing in the past few months.
Dr. Cole told host Jan Jekialek on American Thought Leaders that as CEO of Cole Laboratory, he has “started seeing the incidence of endometrial cancers go up, and melanomas, too.”
He said he “immediately wondered whether it’s because we’ve been locked down and people haven’t been able to get to their doctor. Or is this jump in cancer diagnoses correlating with a timeframe in which people are getting the shots?”
Dr. Cole said he began reading Covid studies obsessively, trying to make sense of the unknown. He then began hearing from oncologists around the country who were encountering similar phenomena.
“Just yesterday, a radiation oncologist told me, ‘I’m seeing cancers of the type that we normally keep in check but something is suddenly out of whack.’ He tells me his cancer patient will normally get 3, 5, 6 good years of life with his treatments, but two months after they got their shot or their booster, their cancer recurs like wildfire. Something’s going awry.”
Dr. Cole cited a high quality study “by Dr. Föhse et al out of the Netherlands, that has shed light on what might be happening. “This team did a good analysis of the immune system after the Pfizer shots,” he said. “Their conclusion is we’re seeing an alteration of the innate immune response.”
“I assume you mean regarding antibodies?” host Jekielek asked.
“Most people equate the immune system with antibodies but that’s not the most important part,” Dr. Cole responded. “The most important part is our T-cell response.”
T-Cell ‘Fighters’ Getting Shut Down
Dr. Cole went on to describe T-cells as “the marines of our immune system, the frontline defense. When an “invader” pops up, the T-cells that are equipped with little “hand grenades” poke a hole in that cell with an enzyme called a “perforin,” and then they throw in a grand enzyme that blows up the infected cell.
“These T-cells do this all day long, keeping viruses, cancers and other enemies at bay,” Cole explained. “They separate ‘friend’ from ‘foe.’ They’ll ‘shake hands’ with a cell and say, ‘Wait, this cell has some mutations, this is an early cancer cell! And they’ll blow it up. Well, that study out of the Netherlands was saying this innate immune response seems to be altered, it’s not acting like it should.”
Cole went on to explain an aspect of basic virology for the layman. “In addition to T-cells, the body has receptors called ‘Toll receptors.’ So Toll receptor 7 and 8 are very important for signaling to your body, “Hey, you need to be awake, you need to be turned on to fight off this virus!’ Because we have virus in our bodies all the time, but our immune system—mostly these T-cells and Toll receptors—prevent it from getting the upper hand.
“Now in that Pfizer study by Dr. Föhse from the Netherlands, the authors realized these receptors in some people are somehow shut off. And so the problem now becomes that the signal that these receptors should be responding to, is not getting picked up. It’s as if the ‘soldiers’ are snoozing or drunk in the barracks.”
“And the result,” said Dr. Cole, “is I’m seeing in the lab things like shingles outbreaks in some people who have taken the shot. And the theory is that those toll-like receptors were down-regulated. That might also explain the uptick in cancers. Because cells and functions that are supposed to be turned “on” to fight off infection were unintentionally shut off in some people….
“This might explain why I’m seeing an increase in cancers at rates I shouldn’t be seeing, in age groups I shouldn’t be seeing,” the pathologist noted, adding that a great deal of investigation is called for before this theory can be verified or ruled out.
“Every adverse reaction, every abnormal health pattern that follows these shots” should have triggered an investigation to pin down “whether it’s related to the experimental shot that we’re injecting into a world population,” he said. “That would be the logical and scientific thing to do.”
The approach, he said, should be “like the French legal system–guilty until proven innocent.” In other words, “the onus is on the drug manufacturers to prove the vaccines are not linked to these adverse events.”
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Pfizer Reports Detail Vaccine Side Effects
In December 2021, two months after a judge ruled in favor of a FOIA lawsuit against the FDA, the agency released a batch of 91 pages from Pfizer’s report on “adverse events” following the emergency use authorization of its Covid vaccine.
Initially classified as “Confidential,’ the report provides detailed data on adverse events recorded by Pfizer, from the outset of the vaccine project in mid-December 2020 to the end of February 2021—at ten-week period.
Titled ‘A Cumulative Analysis of Post-authorization Adverse Event Reports,’ the document records that within this short time frame, Pfizer had received reports of more than 150,000 “adverse events” from recipients of the vaccine, mostly from the United States and mostly concerning women.
These included thousands of complaints related to nervous system disorders; muscle-skeletal and connective tissue disorders, gastrointestinal disorders; respiratory disorders, cardiac disorders and numerous miscarriages and stillbirths.
A quick glance at Table 1 in the Cumulative Analysis gives the number of cases in the study as 42,086, with fatalities tallied at 1,223.
The FDA has not challenged the authenticity of the documents, but has said the data should not be taken out of context and needs to be analyzed by experts.
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DOD Whistleblowers Release Troubling Statistics of Adverse Events
As the released FDA documents were raising red flags, disturbing revelations from the Department of Defense surfaced on Jan. 26, at the all-day Senate Subcommittee hearing (“A Second Opinion”) hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.
Two speakers at the event shared startling statistics about illness and disease in the military over the eleven months Covid vaccines have been available.
Human rights attorney Leigh Dundas raised concerns about data on myocarditis in the Department of Defense tracking system. Myocarditis is the only side effect warning the FDA explicitly places on the mRNA vaccines.
Dundas told Sen. Johnson that in August of 2021, when a DOD report was run on the incidence of acute myocarditis, there were 1,239 cases. When the report is run for the same period now, there are only 307 cases. She added that the initial report for January of 2022 showed 176 cases. Now it only shows 17.
Further disclosures came in the form of affidavits signed by three Department of Defense whistleblowers, all medical doctors, identified as Lt. Colonel Dr. Theresa Long, Dr. Samuel Sigoloff, and Colonel Dr. Peter Chambers. The affidavits were to be submitted to the court this month by attorney Thomas Renz, under penalty of perjury.
According to Renz, the data the physicians provided showed alarming increases in several diagnoses: Miscarriages occurred nearly three times more often than the five-year average. New cancer diagnoses also occurred at three times the five-year average. And there have been ten times the number of neurological diagnoses.
Unlike the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), where anyone may submit a report, the information provided by the DOD system would be similar to insurance billing claims that contain diagnostic codes. Some of the data clearly differed from that posted by the federal public health agencies.
In one example, a recent study on claims data from Kaiser Northwest showed the frequency of myocarditis was 1 in 2,650 (for boys 12-17). This finding was more than two times higher than the previously cited number from the FDA of 1 in 5,000.
The Pentagon has issued a statement saying the huge discrepancies between the data for adverse events for 2021 and those of previous years are attributable to “underreporting” in the years 2016-2019, as well as “faulty databases,” which are now being corrected.
But some experts found the high prevalence of adverse events among the armed forces, a population that is likely healthier and fitter than the general population, deeply troubling in itself, apart from comparison with previous baseline data.
Attorney Dundas asked Sen. Johnson to place the testimony of the whistleblowers on the record. Johnson committed to taking their transcribed interviews and shared he has put the DOD on notice to preserve all records pending an investigation.
