International COVID Study Finds That Lockdowns Had No Clear Effect on Spread
A new study published prior to the Jan. 6 Capitol incursion, but only widely publicized on Friday, blows up the narrative that locking down healthy people made a difference in mitigating the spread of the coronavirus.
Newsweek shared the conveniently-timed post-election and post-incursion lockdown study in a story published on Thursday. The outlet reported a peer-reviewed study, conducted by researchers affiliated with Stanford University and published on Jan. 5, analyzed coronavirus case growth in 10 countries in early 2020.
“COVID lockdowns have no clear benefit vs other voluntary measures, international study shows,” the outlet wrote in a tweet.
COVID lockdowns have no clear benefit vs other voluntary measures, international study shows https://t.co/eCF9mFZ7yd
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) January 15, 2021
The study, which can be viewed on the Wiley Online Library website, evaluated non-pharmaceutical interventions (lockdowns) in the countries of England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden and the U.S.
The results: “no clear, significant beneficial effect of [more restrictive lockdown measures] on case growth in any country.”
“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 researchers found.
In other words, millions were misled by experts who virtue signaled their way into shaming perfectly healthy people into altering their behavior to extreme degrees for almost a year — and it was all for nothing.
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Democrats and the media, of course, resorted to large-scale gaslighting of millions of Americans throughout 2020, selectively using the draconian mandates to keep people from living life, but ignoring them when the left wanted to riot. With regard to lockdowns, non-riotous people were told they were potentially homicidal for refusing to padlock themselves in their bathrooms and basements.
Hunker down to save lives! Vote by mail to save your grandma! Do not ask questions about the erosion of your civil liberties, or you’re a serial killer and a science denier!
We were told these lies, and many people believed them. Mask-shaming became commonplace, as did public harassment for people enjoying themselves outdoors — alone.
The study is just more evidence that all the rhetoric from Democrats was malarkey intended to allow them to rule our lives, to keep us from attending church and to banish us from society if we dared to ask for actual data about their emotional language and behavior.
While anecdotal, California lawmakers have locked down the lives of the roughly 40 million people in the state. The result is that the Golden State has become the epicenter for coronavirus infections.
Either there is a vast underground network of COVID parties occurring on the West Coast, or California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lockdowns were an unmistakable fraud.
Apparently, the governor didn’t fear catching the virus when he flouted his own health orders, as Democrats so often do, to dine out with friends in November.
EXCLUSIVE: We’ve obtained photos of Governor Gavin Newsom at the Napa dinner party he’s in hot water over. The photos call into question just how outdoors the dinner was. A witness who took photos tells us his group was so loud, the sliding doors had to be closed. 10pm on @FOXLA pic.twitter.com/gtOVEwa864
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) November 18, 2020
Sadly, due to the hypocrisy of Democrats, these recent satire articles from The Babylon Bee could have passed for real news articles:
California To Issue Democrat Politicians Special ID Cards Allowing Them To Break Lockdown Rules https://t.co/b0aIzhRIfk
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 6, 2021
Newsom Issues Double Stay-at-Home Order Where You Have To Stay In A Smaller House Inside Your Original House https://t.co/YNaZ2vIREJ
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 6, 2021
Thankfully, after 10 months of COVID panic, we no longer have to rely on anecdotal evidence to demand our rights back. The case against the Democrats’ psychological terrorism is no longer circumstantial — it is one that tries the COVID tyrants, their photo op public health authorities and the lockdowns with direct evidence.
The unmitigated gall of Anthony Fauci to go to a baseball game, not wear a mask and then be apart of the reason so many kids can’t go back to school even with masks on is 1000% infuriating. pic.twitter.com/MlqMa8Avy6
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) July 24, 2020
We already learned last month that these lockdowns were inspired by communist China.
Disparaged Imperial College Professor Neil Ferguson, who convinced U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson to lock down his country in March, divulged last month to a British newspaper that he was inspired by Chinese methods for mitigating the spread of the coronavirus.
“Back in 2019, about the time someone was getting infected by a bat, no European country’s pandemic plans seriously entertained the prospect of putting a country on pause,” Ferguson told London’s The Times. “Then, that’s what China did.”
“I think people’s sense of what is possible in terms of control changed quite dramatically between January and March,” Ferguson added.
“[The Chinese] claimed to have flattened the curve. I was skeptical at first. I thought it was a massive cover-up by the Chinese. But as the data accrued it became clear it was an effective policy,” he said. “It’s a communist one-party state, we said. We couldn’t get away with it in Europe, we thought.”
“And then Italy did it. And we realized we could.”
And get away with it, they did — even here in the U.S., where the Imperial model was used early on — setting a precedent to throw away the Bill of Rights to impose draconian mandates on people. The recent study is simply more evidence that the lockdowns were all either a ruse or a Hail Mary.
Ferguson actually broke his own lockdown recommendations in May for a tryst with his married lover and promptly lost his job.
?Exclusive: Government scientist Neil Ferguson resigns after breaking lockdown rules to meet his married lover https://t.co/eLOfVjgHPL
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) May 5, 2020
The writing was on the wall from the beginning.
Those of us who have been skeptical of the lockdowns aren’t surprised by the findings of the Stanford researchers. Nor are we surprised that the Jan. 5 study was only published by Newsweek five days before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
This all reeks of politics, as the study was shared the same week authoritarian Democrats, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, signaled they were ready to end their respective lockdowns.
We’re now in the middle of the feared second wave of the pandemic, and we’ve just been told that science has suddenly deemed that the business-killing and political lockdowns from the first wave were ineffective at everything — except driving people to suicide, bankruptcy and alcohol and drug addiction.
Isn’t it convenient that Newsweek apparently embargoed the study until after it was certain Biden would replace the most successful president of this century, and after that president was banished from social media and then impeached — again.
This virus, while a risk for some people, was weaponized against us all, and especially against President Donald Trump, from the very beginning. Policy in 2020 was guided by lockdowns, which ravaged the economies of entire cities and damaged the president’s clean economic record.
Like most things pushed by Democrats and celebrated by the establishment media, the lockdowns were good for nothing and predicated on a lie.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
