Lockdowns cause more harm than good

This study says coronavirus lockdowns do a lot of harm, and very little good:

Medical experts Eran Bendavid, Christopher Oh, Jay Bhattacharya, and John Ioannidis published just two weeks ago at the European Journal of Clinical Investigation their research on “Assessing Mandatory Stay-at-Home and Business Closure Effects on the Spread of COVID-19.”

They studied “COVID-19 case growth in relation to any NPI [non-pharmaceutical interventions; i.e., lockdowns: mandatory stay-at-home and business closures] implementation in subnational regions of 10 countries: England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, and the US.” They then examined “case growth in Sweden and South Korea, two countries that did not implement mandatory stay-at-home and business closures, as comparison countries for the other eight countries (16 total comparisons).”

Their findings? “While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs. Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less restrictive interventions.” In short: there was no practical difference in effect between countries that locked down and those that didn’t. Or even shorter: whatever benefits lockdowns give are dwarfed by their enormous costs.

This study was complemented by Canadian infectious disease expert Dr. Ari Joffe in his study “COVID-19: Rethinking the Lockdown Groupthink” (November 2020). Here, he stated that “The costs of lockdowns are at least 10 times higher than the benefits. That is, lockdowns cause far more harm to population well-being than COVID-19 can.”

Another study says that you will probably not get the disease, even if someone in your household gets it:

One in 10 people exposed to COVID-19 tests positive for the virus, according to a study published Friday by JAMA Network Open.

In the analysis of data on more than 7,200 confirmed cases of the virus in the Boston area, diagnosed between March 4 and May 17, 2020, more than 1,800 of the study participants' nearly 18,000 household contacts later were infected, the data showed. ...

Household transmission of the flu can be as low as 1%, research suggests.

The coronavirus most commonly spreads from person-to-person via airborne respiratory droplets emitted from the nose or mouth.

This is lower that earlier studies. It says the coronavirus is less contagious than the flu, but still suggest that the big majority of unvaccinated people are not going to get COVID.

This study surprises me. If true, then maybe 90% of the population is not going to get COVID no matter what. If so, then we are probably already at herd immunity.

Noah Carl writes in Quillette:

Whether or not lockdowns are justifiable on public-health grounds, they certainly represent the greatest infringement on civil liberties in modern history. In the UK, lockdowns have contributed to the largest economic contraction in more than 300 years, as well as countless bankruptcies, and a dramatic rise in public borrowing.

He then goes on to document legitimate scientists arguing that the lockdowns don't work, and being censored for expressing a scientific opinion.

Now Biden accuses Republicans of 'Neanderthal thinking' for lifting mask mandates. This is a slur against those of European descent.