There have been a large number of studies showing that the COVID lockdowns initiated by the world’s government was a deadly policy, and now we have yet another one that has reached that same conclusion.
Most of the world’s governments fell for the lockdown theory in 2020. Many canceled the policies before the year was up, but all too many more kept the disastrous plans in place until well into 2021. Some, like Australia, toyed with them even into 2022.
To date, though, there is no evidence whatsoever that government-enforced lockdowns did anything to stop the spread of COVID. Indeed, it harmed citizens in so many other ways.
As the Washington Examiner noted, the lockdowns were “deadly.”
Meanwhile, those restrictions themselves evidently had deadly consequences. A new study from Casey B. Mulligan and Rob Arnett published in the journal Inquiry finds that non-COVID deaths were highly elevated above expected trends in the U.S. in 2020 and 2021. They report that over this period, approximately 97,000 Americans died annually (not including COVID deaths) above the baseline trend, a statistic known as “excess deaths.”
These deaths included 32,000 deaths from heart disease and hypertension, some of which may have been fueled by the disruption to healthcare services and healthy lifestyles from the COVID restrictions. Meanwhile, deaths due to obesity-related illness, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related causes were all 12,000-15,000 above expected trends. All these factors were heavily influenced by the way COVID-19 lockdowns fueled social isolation, sedentary lifestyles, and mental health issues.
The data “point to a historic, yet largely unacknowledged, health emergency,” the study concludes. “COVID-19 is deadly, but so were the draconian steps taken to mitigate it.”
The analysts break down the “excess deaths” by age, and this really makes the findings clear.
Among those aged 18 to 44, total “excess deaths” (more than half of which were non-COVID-related) were highly elevated. “While largely unharmed by COVID, their aggregate mortality rates increased 26% above previous trends,” the study reports. “This is larger than the percentage jump in deaths for senior citizens, where the COVID toll was largely concentrated, but has received scant notice.”
This is an age group that was always at very minimal risk of dying from COVID-19. The fact that they saw so many excess deaths suggests that they bore the brunt of the burden from the restrictions even though they were meant to protect other groups (namely, the elderly).
Meanwhile, nearly every sane human fully understood — by sheer commonsense — that lockdowns did nothing whatever and amounted more to government’s exercising their power to control us than is saving us from any virus.
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