Soon after COVID-19 came to America, members of the government told us to stay home for two weeks to “flatten the curve.” Then the lockdown was extended in most areas of the nation, and governments at all levels are using mandates to force people to curtail their employment and other activities.
Two years have passed since the
virus came to our shores, and added information is coming out. In January,
Johns Hopkins University released a meta-analysis showing that mortality from
COVID-19 in the United States and across Europe was reduced by 0.2%.
According to Laurel Duggan, the researchers
analyzed several types of “lockdown measures,” including “school closures,
business closures, bans on international travel and internal movement, and
other non-pharmaceutical government mandates such as mask mandates.” She
summarized the study as finding that “shelter-in-place orders were ineffective”
because they reduced “mortality by only 2.9%.” The following quote comes from
the study.
While this meta-analysis concludes that
lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed
enormous economic and social cost…. In consequence, lockdown policies are
ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.
Lockdowns have limited peoples’ access to
safe (outdoor) places such as beaches, parks, and zoos, or included outdoor
mask mandates or strict outdoor gathering restrictions, pushing people to meet
at less safe (indoor) places…. We do find some evidence that limiting
gatherings was counterproductive and increased COVID-19 mortality.
John Hopkins University is one of
the schools that had fully remote classes for the fall 2020 semester. They
urged their students to stay out of Baltimore before holding “partially in-person
model in the spring 2021 semester.”
Duggan wrote, “The school still imposes a
mask mandate, requiring two masks or a surgical-grade mask, despite nearly
universal vaccination of students and staff, a booster shot, and a twice-weekly
testing requirement.” She continued, “COVID-19-related school closures,
government-imposed mask mandates, and restrictions on travel are still
prevalent in the U.S. and internationally.”
No comments:
Post a Comment