https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10471265/Johns-Hopkins-professor-blasts-college-media-downplaying-study-COVID-lockdowns.html
"Johns Hopkins professor blasts his OWN college and the mainstream media for not publicizing study that found COVID lockdowns only reduced deaths by 0.2% because it doesn't fit their 'narrative'
Economists at the college found that lockdowns reduced deaths by just 0.2%
The meta-analysis of 24 studies called stay-at-home orders 'ill-founded' policy
Makary, a surgeon and professor, said the university didn't publicize the findings
He called out the media for ignoring the study on Tucker Carlson's show
Economists who carried out the review said border closures had virtually zero effect on Covid mortality (-0.1%)
Researchers found closing nonessential shops was most effective, causing 10.6% fall
By ADAM MANNO and GINA MARTINEZ and MORGAN PHILLIPS, POLITICS REPORTER and CONNOR BOYD DEPUTY HEALTH EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 01:42 EST, 3 February 2022 | UPDATED: 01:50 EST, 3 February 2022
...
Dr. Martin Makary warned that 'people may already have their own narrative written' about the effectiveness of lockdowns in an interview with Tucker Carlson Wednesday night.
'Johns Hopkins itself did not even put out a press release about this study, and if you look at the media coverage, it's one of the biggest stories in the world today, and yet certain media outlets have not even covered it,' Makary told the Fox News host. ....Makary said the small number of lives saved by the lockdowns doesn't come close to those lost to lack of health care, such as patients who forwent cancer treatments.
The study found that lockdowns imposed in many US cities in the spring of 2020 led to a reduction of COVID deaths by 0.2 percent.
'Now compare that number, which turns out to be about 1,800 individuals, to the number of non-COVID deaths, what we call the "excess non-COVID mortality" in the United States.
'It was 124,000 excess deaths in year one. So, over two years, it was about a quarter million people who died. Many many scientists have now begun to peel back this number,' Makary said. ...He explained that 60,000 to 70,000 of them died from substance abuse, while others died from deferred cancer care, self harm and other side effects of lockdowns.
The surgeon also pointed out the number of children who fell behind as schooling moved online.
'There are hundreds of kids in Baltimore alone that the teachers described never logged on to their virtual learning modules, ever,' he said.
Makary criticized Johns Hopkins and the mainstream media for not publicizing the findings.
'Pretty quickly we started to get the data from Northern Italy that, not only was it not equally distributed in the population, but the harm was so profoundly skewed towards older people and people with co-morbidities,' he said.
Makary is a professor of surgery at the private university in Baltimore. He was not involved in the study.
Economists at the college carried out a meta-analysis and found that restrictions imposed in the spring of 2020 - including stay-at-home orders, compulsory masks and social distancing - only reduced COVID mortality by 0.2 percent.
They warned that lockdowns caused 'enormous economic and social costs' and concluded that they were 'ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument' going forward. ...Even in the early days of New York, we got data that was largely ignored. That 80 percent of the deaths were in people over 65, and half of them, roughly, were in nursing homes.
'And yet we continued to treat this as if everybody was at equal risk, and we continue to do that today. In schools, where children bear the biggest burden of the restrictions in this country. So I think the public is hungry for honesty and basic humility from public health officials.'
Republicans say the new report proves that Dr. Anthony Fauci and his claim that pandemic restrictions saved 'millions' are not to be trusted.
'Bad judgment and poor leadership from our nation's health agencies have caused most Americans to live with an unhealthy fear of COVID-19. There is no doubt, we need a new approach to COVID as we must learn to live with it,' Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, told DailyMail.com upon review of the new Johns Hopkins research.
'That new approach should not include Dr. Fauci – American's don't trust him and he has lost his reputation. We must stop the obsession with COVID, stop living in fear and move forward.' Critics have accused them of 'cherry-picking' studies to suit their narrative and have raised doubts about the biases of its authors, who have been vocal about lockdowns and vaccine mandates on social media.
Most scientists believe that, before the arrival of vaccines and antivirals, lockdowns had a significant effect on cutting transmission and therefore reducing the number of hospital admissions and deaths caused by Covid.
But there has been a growing consensus that draconian restrictions have led to a rise in non-Covid deaths, thought to be people whose conditions worsened during the pandemic when they could not access healthcare.
In the latest report, the researchers admit their review does not answer 'why' lockdowns didn't achieve their ultimate goal in saving lives but they float a number of explanations.
Revealed: How Covid lockdowns have ravaged the economies of Britain and the US - sending inflation to its highest level in 30 YEARS
The pandemic has battered the economies of the UK and US, with inflation rates rising to their highest level for decades.
Lockdowns pushed consumer spending to its lowest levels, while border closures and staff shortages choked supply runs.
Meanwhile, furlough schemes and the procurement of PPE and vaccines saw unprecedented public spending.
And new mutations could prolong the financial hardship, with economists downgrading their forecasts for the first quarter of 2022 after the emergence of Omicron.
...
US
Inflation spiked to 7 per cent in the US in December, marking the seventh month in a row that the figure has soared above 5 per cent.
Covid-related supply problems, that continue to impact the price of goods, are partly behind the rise.
National debt skyrocketed to $31.3trillion after huge sums were borrowed during the pandemic — four years earlier than expected.
And GDP fell at the quickest rate seen in 70 years when lockdown restrictions were implemented in 2020.
The US sought $5trillion to combat the pandemic to support the unemployed and small businesses and issue stimulus cheques worth thousands of dollars to Americans.
They suggest that lockdowns may have greater unintended consequences than was previously thought.
An example given was that isolating people at home may have led to them passing a higher viral load to their family members, causing more severe illness.
Or closing certain retail businesses may lead to a higher concentration of people in 'essential' shops where the risk of transmission is higher.
Another possible theory is that people's behaviour rebounded after lockdowns squashed case rates so low, they perceived the virus as less of a threat.
They claimed the best explanation for differing Covid death rates in countries was 'differences in population age and health' and the 'quality of the health sector.
But they could not rule out 'less obvious factors, such as culture, communication, and coincidences'. Covid deaths are also skewed by the volume of testing each country carries out, which many scientists have highlighted as the driving factor behind Britain's large toll.
To come to their findings, the researchers said they whittled down 18,590 global studies on lockdown and lockdown restrictions to 117.
The criteria for the studies to be eligible were they must measure the effect of lockdown on mortality and use an 'empirical approach' - meaning to use real-world data.
These were then boiled down to just 34 papers, with the others discarded for various reasons, including being duplicates or papers written by student papers.
Reasons for excluding others were vague, however, with nine papers left out because they had 'too few observations' and nine more because they 'only looked at timing'.
At least two studies - one in the UK - that found clear drops in Covid deaths by comparing the rate directly before and after a lockdown were left out because the researchers claimed they may have been biased by 'time-dependent factors' such as seasonality.
A popular paper which claimed 3million lives in Europe had been saved due to the spring 2020 lockdowns was also excluded - because it relied on modelling.
Crucially, the researchers also left out studies which looked at early lockdowns in countries which managed to suppress Covid and record extremely low death rates during the pandemic through incredibly strict lockdowns and border controls — such as China, Australia and New Zealand.
Noting this limitation, the authors write: 'One objection to our conclusions may be that we do not look at the role of timing. If timing is very important, differences in timing may empirically overrule any differences in lockdowns.'
They add: 'Including these studies will greatly overestimate the effect of lockdowns, and, hence, we chose not to include studies focusing on timing of lockdowns in our review.'...
"Johns Hopkins professor blasts his OWN college and the mainstream media for not publicizing study that found COVID lockdowns only reduced deaths by 0.2% because it doesn't fit their 'narrative'
Economists at the college found that lockdowns reduced deaths by just 0.2%
The meta-analysis of 24 studies called stay-at-home orders 'ill-founded' policy
Makary, a surgeon and professor, said the university didn't publicize the findings
He called out the media for ignoring the study on Tucker Carlson's show
Economists who carried out the review said border closures had virtually zero effect on Covid mortality (-0.1%)
Researchers found closing nonessential shops was most effective, causing 10.6% fall
By ADAM MANNO and GINA MARTINEZ and MORGAN PHILLIPS, POLITICS REPORTER and CONNOR BOYD DEPUTY HEALTH EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 01:42 EST, 3 February 2022 | UPDATED: 01:50 EST, 3 February 2022
...
Dr. Martin Makary warned that 'people may already have their own narrative written' about the effectiveness of lockdowns in an interview with Tucker Carlson Wednesday night.
'Johns Hopkins itself did not even put out a press release about this study, and if you look at the media coverage, it's one of the biggest stories in the world today, and yet certain media outlets have not even covered it,' Makary told the Fox News host. ....Makary said the small number of lives saved by the lockdowns doesn't come close to those lost to lack of health care, such as patients who forwent cancer treatments.
The study found that lockdowns imposed in many US cities in the spring of 2020 led to a reduction of COVID deaths by 0.2 percent.
'Now compare that number, which turns out to be about 1,800 individuals, to the number of non-COVID deaths, what we call the "excess non-COVID mortality" in the United States.
'It was 124,000 excess deaths in year one. So, over two years, it was about a quarter million people who died. Many many scientists have now begun to peel back this number,' Makary said. ...He explained that 60,000 to 70,000 of them died from substance abuse, while others died from deferred cancer care, self harm and other side effects of lockdowns.
The surgeon also pointed out the number of children who fell behind as schooling moved online.
'There are hundreds of kids in Baltimore alone that the teachers described never logged on to their virtual learning modules, ever,' he said.
Makary criticized Johns Hopkins and the mainstream media for not publicizing the findings.
'Pretty quickly we started to get the data from Northern Italy that, not only was it not equally distributed in the population, but the harm was so profoundly skewed towards older people and people with co-morbidities,' he said.
Makary is a professor of surgery at the private university in Baltimore. He was not involved in the study.
Economists at the college carried out a meta-analysis and found that restrictions imposed in the spring of 2020 - including stay-at-home orders, compulsory masks and social distancing - only reduced COVID mortality by 0.2 percent.
They warned that lockdowns caused 'enormous economic and social costs' and concluded that they were 'ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument' going forward. ...Even in the early days of New York, we got data that was largely ignored. That 80 percent of the deaths were in people over 65, and half of them, roughly, were in nursing homes.
'And yet we continued to treat this as if everybody was at equal risk, and we continue to do that today. In schools, where children bear the biggest burden of the restrictions in this country. So I think the public is hungry for honesty and basic humility from public health officials.'
Republicans say the new report proves that Dr. Anthony Fauci and his claim that pandemic restrictions saved 'millions' are not to be trusted.
'Bad judgment and poor leadership from our nation's health agencies have caused most Americans to live with an unhealthy fear of COVID-19. There is no doubt, we need a new approach to COVID as we must learn to live with it,' Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, told DailyMail.com upon review of the new Johns Hopkins research.
'That new approach should not include Dr. Fauci – American's don't trust him and he has lost his reputation. We must stop the obsession with COVID, stop living in fear and move forward.' Critics have accused them of 'cherry-picking' studies to suit their narrative and have raised doubts about the biases of its authors, who have been vocal about lockdowns and vaccine mandates on social media.
Most scientists believe that, before the arrival of vaccines and antivirals, lockdowns had a significant effect on cutting transmission and therefore reducing the number of hospital admissions and deaths caused by Covid.
But there has been a growing consensus that draconian restrictions have led to a rise in non-Covid deaths, thought to be people whose conditions worsened during the pandemic when they could not access healthcare.
In the latest report, the researchers admit their review does not answer 'why' lockdowns didn't achieve their ultimate goal in saving lives but they float a number of explanations.
Revealed: How Covid lockdowns have ravaged the economies of Britain and the US - sending inflation to its highest level in 30 YEARS
The pandemic has battered the economies of the UK and US, with inflation rates rising to their highest level for decades.
Lockdowns pushed consumer spending to its lowest levels, while border closures and staff shortages choked supply runs.
Meanwhile, furlough schemes and the procurement of PPE and vaccines saw unprecedented public spending.
And new mutations could prolong the financial hardship, with economists downgrading their forecasts for the first quarter of 2022 after the emergence of Omicron.
...
US
Inflation spiked to 7 per cent in the US in December, marking the seventh month in a row that the figure has soared above 5 per cent.
Covid-related supply problems, that continue to impact the price of goods, are partly behind the rise.
National debt skyrocketed to $31.3trillion after huge sums were borrowed during the pandemic — four years earlier than expected.
And GDP fell at the quickest rate seen in 70 years when lockdown restrictions were implemented in 2020.
The US sought $5trillion to combat the pandemic to support the unemployed and small businesses and issue stimulus cheques worth thousands of dollars to Americans.
They suggest that lockdowns may have greater unintended consequences than was previously thought.
An example given was that isolating people at home may have led to them passing a higher viral load to their family members, causing more severe illness.
Or closing certain retail businesses may lead to a higher concentration of people in 'essential' shops where the risk of transmission is higher.
Another possible theory is that people's behaviour rebounded after lockdowns squashed case rates so low, they perceived the virus as less of a threat.
They claimed the best explanation for differing Covid death rates in countries was 'differences in population age and health' and the 'quality of the health sector.
But they could not rule out 'less obvious factors, such as culture, communication, and coincidences'. Covid deaths are also skewed by the volume of testing each country carries out, which many scientists have highlighted as the driving factor behind Britain's large toll.
To come to their findings, the researchers said they whittled down 18,590 global studies on lockdown and lockdown restrictions to 117.
The criteria for the studies to be eligible were they must measure the effect of lockdown on mortality and use an 'empirical approach' - meaning to use real-world data.
These were then boiled down to just 34 papers, with the others discarded for various reasons, including being duplicates or papers written by student papers.
Reasons for excluding others were vague, however, with nine papers left out because they had 'too few observations' and nine more because they 'only looked at timing'.
At least two studies - one in the UK - that found clear drops in Covid deaths by comparing the rate directly before and after a lockdown were left out because the researchers claimed they may have been biased by 'time-dependent factors' such as seasonality.
A popular paper which claimed 3million lives in Europe had been saved due to the spring 2020 lockdowns was also excluded - because it relied on modelling.
Crucially, the researchers also left out studies which looked at early lockdowns in countries which managed to suppress Covid and record extremely low death rates during the pandemic through incredibly strict lockdowns and border controls — such as China, Australia and New Zealand.
Noting this limitation, the authors write: 'One objection to our conclusions may be that we do not look at the role of timing. If timing is very important, differences in timing may empirically overrule any differences in lockdowns.'
They add: 'Including these studies will greatly overestimate the effect of lockdowns, and, hence, we chose not to include studies focusing on timing of lockdowns in our review.'...
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