Rita Panahi: Scientists finally vindicated for challenging ridiculous lockdowns

After two years of unbridled irrationality and panic, study after study shows that lockdowns now represent the greatest public policy disaster in living memory.

The sweetest words in the English language are “I told you so”.

World leading scientists behind the Great Barrington Declaration who were maligned and slandered by the media for challenging the madness of locking down society to tackle a respiratory virus have been vindicated.

After close to two years of unbridled irrationality and panic, the data is rolling in and study after study shows that lockdowns – embraced by nations who abandoned their advanced pandemic plans and followed China’s Covid-19 strategy – represent the greatest public policy disaster in living memory.

The latest data, a meta-analysis of dozens of studies across US and Europe, led by US and Swedish researchers found that lockdowns had “little to no effect” on saving lives during the pandemic. The study, led by Steve Hanke, a founder of the Johns Hopkins School of Applied Economics, concluded that lockdowns “reduced Covid-19 mortality by 0.2 per cent on average” and should be rejected as a pandemic policy.

“While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted,” wrote the professors who pointed out the “devastating effects” of the early lockdowns. “They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy.

A meta-analysis of dozens of studies found that lockdowns had “little to no effect” on saving lives. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

“Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument.”

As one of the chief proponents of “focused protection”, Dr Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, has been scathing of lockdowns and the damage they cause. “It is not surprising that diehard lockdowners are claiming that we never really had a lockdown, now that it is clear to everyone the catastrophic failure of the dystopian pandemic plan they forced on the world,” he wrote.

Dr Bhattacharya points out that it’s not just the affluent West that has been decimated by lockdowns. He highlights that the impact on poorer nations has been nothing short of catastrophic. “By March 2021 the UN estimated that lockdowns had killed 228,000 children in South Asia due to starvation and halted routine immunisation. The idea that lockdowns were the moral thing to do was a monstrous idea from its inception,” he wrote.

Countries in South Asia suffered heavily during lockdown. Picture: AFP

And, as the data rolls in, many of the public health bureaucrats who followed China’s lead in pushing for lockdowns are attempting to rewrite history. Suddenly the “experts” who pushed Covid-zero or eradication are talking about the harms of restrictions and the need to “live with the virus”.

In Australia we still have people who believe our relatively low Covid-19 death rate is due largely to lockdowns rather than the fact our island nation closed its borders in March 2020.

But ultimately the measure of success will not be the number of deaths from or with Covid-19 but the number of excess deaths. We will not know the full toll of Covid-19 policies for years to come including the number of premature deaths due to missed early diagnosis of cancer and heart disease cases. We can never allow those who inflicted these harmful, illiberal policies to escape responsibility.