UN WHO disavows lockdowns

Fox News reports:

The World Health Organization has warned leaders against relying on COVID-19 lockdowns to tackle outbreaks — after previously saying countries should be careful how quickly they reopen.

WHO envoy Dr. David Nabarro said such restrictive measures should only be treated as a last resort, the British magazine the Spectator reported in a video interview.

“We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Nabarro said.

“The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”

Nabarro said tight restrictions cause significant harm, particularly on the global economy.

“Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer,” he said.

I think that there will eventually be a consensus that the lockdowns did more harm than good.

A couple of recent studies blame blame 225,500 American deaths on COVID-19, but the disease itself was only a contributing factor in 67% of them. They say:

The other pandemic-related deaths are due to:

People not getting care in emergency situations—for example, "the patient with chest pain who's scared to call 911 because they don't want to get the virus, and dies of a heart attack," Woolf said.

Patients dying from chronic conditions like diabetes, cancer and heart problems, because they didn't have access to the medical care that had helped them control their health problems.

People suffering from pandemic-related anxiety, depression or stress who either die by suicide or die from an accidental overdose.

"The opioid epidemic hasn't gone away," Woolf said. "People under stress trying to cope with the strains of this pandemic may have taken a drug overdose and died. We suspect some of those excess deaths are from these other causes."

The number of deaths that were directly caused by the virus could be as low as 6%.

Update: Another study shows that masks are ineffective.