Studies in America and Europe say lockdowns don’t work
First word
Itake t ime today to acknowledge letters that have been to sent me in reaction to some of my recent columns.
I can’t address and thank them all in one go. For now, I will highlight two recent arrivals in my mail.
1. A wonderful note from Dr. David Samadi, whom I quoted at length in my column last Thursday (“The importance of Covid-19 statistics. What DoH must tell us,”
July 2, 2020).
2. A startling message from Greg Gibson, who was writing I presume from America. He asked me if I would be interested in writing on nine studies against lockdowns, and he provided me links to the studies.
There are other arresting letters relating to other questions, but I will reserve comment for another time.
Opening the minds of doctors and policymakers
Dr. David Samadi (
wrote on July 2:
“I wanted to thank you for writing such a detailed article and I appreciate you referring to some of the articles that I have written.
“I believe an article such as the one you wrote opens up the minds of doctors and public health policy makers to think about every step they make. These decisions if not well thought of can destroy the global economy and people’s lives.
“I will continue to educate the public and give my honest opinion.
“I am also a huge fan of your country since most of my nurses are from Manila. Be well and stay in touch.”
Dr. Samadi is the director of men’s health and urologic oncology at the St. Francis Hospital in Long Island, New York.
Treasure trove of lockdown studies
Writing perhaps also from America, Greg Gibson (
sent me a friendly message and an unexpected gift.
He said he had read my recent articles against lockdowns and asked if I would be interested in writing about nine studies against lockdowns.
Here they are below.
“… Home outbreaks were the dominant category ( 254 of 318 outbreaks; 79.9 percent), followed by transport (108; 34 percent…Most home outbreaks involved three to five cases. We identified only a single outbreak in an outdoor environment, which involved two cases…”
– “Indoor Transmission of SARSCoV-2” by Prof. Hua Qian, PhD
“…In a study of some 1,000 new patients admitted to New York hospitals over the last week, 66 percent were staying at home…Almost all of them — 96 percent — had underlying conditions.”
– “Revealed: 66% of New York State Coronavirus Hospitalizations Are People Staying at Home” by Jennifer Smith
“The odds that a primary case transmitted Covid-19 in a closed environment was 18.7 times greater compared to an open-air environment (95 percent confidence interval [CI]: 6.0, 57.9). Conclusions: It is plausible that closed environments contribute to secondary transmission of Covid-19 and promote superspreading events…”
– “Closed Environments Facilitate Secondary Transmission of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19)” by Prof. Hiroshi Nishiura, MD, PhD, et al.
“…There were 12 countries (with at least a million people) that had, on May 12, reported death rates greater than 100 per million…
“There were 31 countries (of at least one million) with reported death rates from 11 to 99 per million…
“There were 51 countries (of at least one million) with reported death rates from 1 to 10 per million…
“Finally, there were 30 countries (also at least one million) with reported deaths under 1 per million…
“I first went through every country and classified whether that country had a government-imposed lockdown of at least half its population, for any time in 2020…The spread in death rates is more than sufficient proof against lockdowns, as we’ll see…
“What can we conclude. Only one thing: we cannot conclude that lockdowns worked…”
– “There Is No Evidence Lockdowns Saved Lives. It Is Indisputable They Caused Great Harm” by William M. Briggs, PhD.
“…We found that closure of education facilities, prohibiting mass gatherings and closure of some nonessential businesses were associated with reduced incidence whereas stay at home orders, closure of all nonbusinesses and requiring the wearing of face masks or coverings in public was not associated with any independent additional impact…”
– “Impact of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions Against Covid-19 in Europe” by Prof. Paul R. Hunter, MD, et al.
“Comparing US states shows there is no relationship between lockdowns and lower Covid- 19 deaths… the seven social-distancing states experienced 12, 19, 11, 12, 8, 7 and three deaths per million — for an average of 10 deaths per million…
“The average number of casesperacross the states minus New York was 1,392 and the average number of deaths-per-million was 54. Comparing the social-distancing states plus South Carolina to US states minus New York, the socialdistancing states experienced 663 fewer cases per million and 42 fewer deaths per million on average than the lockdown states…
“Japan had…73 cases per million citizens, and two deaths per million. South Korea had… 207 cases per million and four deaths per million. Taiwan had…17 cases per million and 0.03 deaths per million.”
– “There Is No Empirical Evidence for These Lockdowns” by Prof. Wilfred Reilly, PhD
“…And now there is an article in the
where others have crunched the numbers and come to the same conclusion, Do lockdowns save many lives? In most places, the data say no! … comparison of deaths between states…The correlation coefficient was 5.5 percent — so low that the engineers I used to employ would have summarized it as ‘no correlation’ and moved on to find the real cause of the problem…”
– “Lockdowns Don’t Work. What Does?” (excerpt from
“This phenomenological study assesses the impacts of full lockdown strategies applied in Italy, France, Spain and United Kingdom, on the slowdown of the 2020 Covid-19 outbreak. Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, and reproduction number trends. Extrapolating pre-lockdown growth rate trends, we provide estimates of the death toll in the absence of any lockdown policies, and show that these strategies might not have saved any life in Western Europe. We also show that neighboring countries applying less restrictive social distancing measures (as opposed to police-enforced home containment) experience a very similar time evolution of the epidemic.”
– “Full Lockdown Policies in Western Europe Countries Have No Evident Impacts in the Covid- 19 Epidemic,” by Thomas Meunier, PhD
“…But ordering people to cower in their homes, harassing people for having play dates in the park, and ordering small businesses to close regardless of their hygienic procedures has no demonstrated effectiveness…”
– “Lockdowns Don’t Work,” By Lyman Stone
“More than 600 doctors signed onto a letter sent to President Trump Tuesday pushing him to end the ‘national shutdown’ aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus, calling the widespread state orders keeping businesses closed and kids home from school a ‘mass casualty incident’ with ‘exponentially growing health consequences’.”
The letter outlines a variety of consequences that the doctors have observed resulting from the coronavirus shutdowns, including patients missing routine checkups that could detect things like heart problems or cancer, increases in substance and alcohol abuse, and increases in financial instability that could lead to “[p]overty and financial uncertainty,” which “is closely linked to poor health.”
‘We are alarmed at what appears to be the lack of consideration for the future health of our patients,’ the doctors say in their letter. ‘The downstream health effects ... are being massively underestimated and under-reported. This is an order of magnitude error’.”
The letter continues: “The millions of casualties of a continued shutdown will be hiding in plain sight, but they will be called alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, heart attack, stroke, or kidney failure. In youths it will be called financial instability, unemployment, despair, drug addiction, unplanned pregnancies, poverty, and abuse…”
– “Doctors Raise Alarm About Health Effects of Continued Coronavirus Shutdown: Mass Casualty Incident” by Tyler Olson
Attention: IATF and LGUs
After reading most of these studies, I believe our policymakers at the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emrging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) and local executives are flailing at the pandemic wildly and blindly, from lack of awareness of what is now known about the coronavirus.
I want to share this column especially with the members of the IATF-EID and our local government executives, in the hope that they will take the time to study them.
In recent days, many of our towns and were summarily locked down by local executives, out of fear of the virus spreading in their jurisdictions.
This is a fruitless effort. They should know that there is no evidence that lockdowns work in stopping viral spread. Indeed, it appears from the above studies in America and Europe that lockdowns do more harm than good.
It is high time that the IATF-EID faces the issue publicly. It should present proof, even only an iota, that locking up entire communities can control Covid-19, or, failing that, change course.