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I’ve been saying it since the early months of the pandemic, and I’m going to keep saying it because those responsible ought to hear: lockdowns were worse than useless.
It was all for nothing. Really, for nothing. The miseries we inflicted on ourselves after March 2020 — the school closures, the ruined businesses, the debts, the authoritarianism — were caused by a moment of lightheaded panic.
How can I be so sure? Because, three-and-a-half years on, the results are in. And, let me warn you, they make dismal reading for anyone who went along with the lockdowns.
From almost the instant that so many governments abandoned decades of pandemic planning rushed, panicked, to copy-cat the Chinese Communist Party, the evidence was clear: lockdowns weren’t working. If they did, Dan Andrews’ Victoria ought to have been the Covid shining star. Instead, it was the Wooden Spooner of Australia. Most notably, its worst Covid outbreaks occurred after lockdowns were imposed.
It wasn’t just in Australia, though. Very quickly, the evidence from rival US states was clear: those states which locked down did no better, or often worse, than those who did.
Then there was Sweden.
You see, there was a counterfactual all along. Sweden did not impose mask mandates or stay-at-home orders. It did not close its borders or its businesses. Other than banning large meetings, it carried on as normal and told people to use their common sense.
The lickspittle media, the authoritarian politicians, and the power-drunk bureaucrats, all hammered Sweden. Even though Sweden was doing exactly what bodies like the WHO had repeatedly advised for decades — right up until the very month before the pandemic.
The rest of the world embarked on an experiment; Sweden was the control. And the leaders of other countries knew it at the time. Hence their resentment of that stolid, sensible social democracy.
In a series of leaked WhatsApp messages, the British health minister, Matt Hancock, raged at what he called the “f*g Sweden argument.” In one of his texts, he instructed an adviser to “supply three or four bullet [points] of why Sweden is wrong.”
Note the phrasing: “why” not “if.” Britain, like most of the world, had by then committed itself to the most illiberal and expensive policy in the modern age. The idea that it had overreacted was too awful to contemplate.
When Sweden, as should have been expected anyway, had an initial spike in cases — still much lower than in Spain and Italy, let alone the US or Britain — the Covidians pounced. Sweden was pilloried
But Sweden also demolished the rationale for lockdowns: the so-called “two weeks to flatten the curve” that somehow turned into nearly three years of lockdowns. The argument was that, without lockdowns, hospital systems would be overrun. But Sweden without lockdowns never came close to being overrun. Nor, contrary to media hysterics, were many other countries. Even in Italy, the “overrun” was in fact just winter-as-usual for a chronically unfit health system.
The Covidians screeched that, never mind Italy or Britain, Sweden did worse than other Scandinavian countries. Well, slightly, initially… but, even then, it was not a case of apples and apples.
In any case, even within Scandinavia, different countries had different rules for recording Covid deaths. In Norway, Covid had to be declared a cause of death by the attendant physician. In Sweden, if you choked on a meatball while carrying the virus, you counted as a Covid death.
In fact, on a more sober, reliable measure, overall excess deaths (i.e., how many people died during the pandemic years, compared to other years), a very different picture emerges. One that the lockdown fanatics won’t want to hear.
On that measure, Sweden did not just avoid a high death rate. According to Eurostat, the official EU statistical agency, it had the lowest death rate in Europe, below even Denmark, Norway, and Finland — 4.4% higher than in the previous period, compared to 11.1% for Europe as a whole.
We can fine-tune that calculation by factoring in age, obesity levels, and so on and asking how many people we would normally expect to die. If we do that, Sweden actually lengthens its lead over the rest of Europe.
What I’ve also been arguing from the earliest days of the pandemic is also, depressingly, coming to pass: lockdowns didn’t just not work, they made things worse.
The gap [in excess deaths] is growing as the long-term consequences of lockdown, from mental health problems to missed cancer screenings, kick in. And poverty tends to correlate with lower life expectancy. According to the OECD, the world economy at the end of 2021 was 2.9% smaller than it would have been with no pandemic, but Sweden’s was 0.4% larger.
No, there is no way to sugarcoat this. The people who ordered the lockdowns caused needless poverty, illness and death. They did not mean to, but they did.
The Washington Examiner
And they have never been held accountable. Judging by the continuing lies and denial, they’re determined to make sure they never will be.
