The BFD | Lockdowns. Do. Not. Work.

Just how many times do we have to say it? How many scientific studies have to be published, proving it?

Lockdowns. Do. Not. Work.

We’ve been reporting the evidence that lockdowns are a lunatic policy for nearly a year now. From the moment real-world data was available, the science (as opposed to the phony ‘science’ gibbered by government-lickspittles and neon-haired media-tart frightbats in labcoats) was clear: lockdowns result in no better outcomes than following a few simple and voluntary precautions.

In the year since governments and bureaucrats lost their collective minds, the evidence has only got clearer. Yet another study has demolished the deadly, destructive lie of “lockdowns save lives”.

A study evaluating COVID-19 responses around the world found that mandatory lockdown orders early in the pandemic may not provide significantly more benefits to slowing the spread of the disease than other voluntary measures, such as social distancing or travel reduction.

The peer reviewed study was published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation on January 5, and analyzed coronavirus case growth in 10 countries in early 2020.

There’s no “may” about it. The evidence is damningly conclusive.

The study compared cases in England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the U.S. – all countries that implemented mandatory lockdown orders and business closures – to South Korea and Sweden, which instituted less severe, voluntary responses. It aimed to analyze the effect that less restrictive or more restrictive measures had on changing individual behavior and curbing the transmission of the virus.

The researchers used a mathematical model to compare countries that did and did not enact more restrictive lockdown orders, and determined that there was “no clear, significant beneficial effect of [more restrictive measures] on case growth in any country.”

This is not to say we should do nothing. The simplest voluntary measures are the most effective: rigorous hand hygiene and social distancing, for example. Placing entire populations under virtual house arrest, on the other hand, is just dictatorial bureaucratic lunacy.

“We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures,” the research said.

Bear in mind that the studies, like this one, that show that lockdowns do not work, are based on real-world data and comparisons. The proponents of lockdowns, on the other hand, have nothing but demonstrably-false computer “projections” to try and justify their authoritarian garbage.

A study published in the journal Nature by researchers at Imperial College London in June found that some 3.1 million deaths had been averted due to lockdowns across Europe early on in the pandemic[…]

A second study published alongside that report in Nature, and led by scientists in the United States, found that 530 million coronavirus infections had been avoided due to early lockdowns in China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France and the United States, according to the news outlet.

Newsweek

The only way to come up with such bullshit scare-mongering is by resorting to computer models which we know are garbage. The research at Imperial College London cited by the Nature study is by the thoroughly discredited Prof. Neil Ferguson. Ferguson notoriously fuelled the 2001 foot and mouth panic which led directly to the destruction of millions of cattle, and the livelihoods of farmers along with it, when his computer modelling predicted 150 000 deaths. Less than 200 people died. Similarly, Ferguson was hopelessly wrong about BSE, just the following year.

Ferguson was back at it in 2005, shrieking that 150 million people would die from bird flu. Less than 300 died.

In 2009, Ferguson was “projecting” 65 000 deaths from swine flu in the UK. Less than 500 died.

Ferguson is a clown and his modelling is utter garbage – yet it’s the same modelling now being used to justify lockdowns.