Compulsory social distancing measures, touted to the public as necessary to fight back the spread of Covid-19, did not have any significant effect on mortality rates during the first wave of the disease, a new study said. Policymakers could have just trusted people to act rationally and responsibly and take precautions without any mandates.
The striking conclusion was made after a meta-analysis study of 24 scientific papers, which was described by a team of researchers led by Professor Steve H. Hanke, who co-directs the Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise.
They wanted to see if there was empirical evidence that lockdowns - compulsory government policies on things like freedom of domestic and international movement, business operations or public gatherings - prevented deaths from Covid-19. The answer was no, according to the paper.
They wrote that "lockdowns in Europe and the United States only reduced Covid-19 mortality by 0.2% on average." For the more restrictive 'shelter-in-place-orders' the same metric averaged 2.9%.
Studies of specific measures like school lockdowns or border closures were somewhat inconclusive, there was "no broad-based evidence" in favor. Forced closures of businesses may have been beneficial for mortality rates, probably because they forced bars and restaurants to shut down.
There was also some evidence that mask mandates had significant positive effects. But only two studies that qualified for the meta-analysis dealt with such measures, and one of them only looked into the effect of compulsory face cover for employees, so researchers were not certain about masks.
"Overall, we conclude that lockdowns are not an effective way of reducing mortality rates during a pandemic, at least not during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic," the researchers said.The assessment is in line with what a team at the World Health Organization said in 2006 about the public response to the 1918 influenza pandemic as well as some other similar studies. A different meta-analysis study conducted in 2020 by Nadya Johanna of the University of Indonesia contrasted with the research, which Hanke and colleagues attributed to a different approach for selecting the underlying materials.
The researchers stressed that they didn't try to explain why lockdowns wouldn't work, but suggested several possible factors. The first one is that people react to dangerous situations regardless of government mandates, taking precautions when infection rates surge and ignoring rules when the rates go down.
Some non-pharmaceutical interventions are hard to mandate in the first place, like hand-washing and keeping a distance at supermarkets. And in some cases lockdowns may have unintended negative consequences. Banning people from relatively safe open public spaces and forcing them to spend all their time at home with family, who may be asymptomatic and infectious, is one example, the researchers said.
"In the early stages of a pandemic, before the arrival of vaccines and new treatments, a society can respond in two ways: mandated behavioral changes or voluntary behavioral changes," the paper said. "Our study fails to demonstrate significant positive effects of mandated behavioral changes (lockdowns). This should draw our focus to the role of voluntary behavioral changes."
Those who moved along the crest of the institutional "narrative" protest did what was called counter-information. Against information accredited by power such as official information. Counter-information produced dossiers that dismantled the official versions point by point and, supported by strong activism, it was also possible to break through the information wall. So it happened that points of view of the extreme minority could also become not by say majority, but relevant. I don't get lost here in so many examples, but our history since the war offers a good number of them. However, what I would like to emphasize here is that the legitimacy of the exercise of counter-information was not called into question.
Things then began to take a completely different turn. The system (I know, generic word), in conjunction with the evolution of communication, which has become more and more totalizing, to discredit differing points of view has begun to use the deadly weapon of delegitimization, in this making use of real communication experts who do just that for a living. So it is no longer necessary to respond to the accusations of "counter informers" with solid and rational arguments, but it is enough to de-legitimize them, both through personal discredit and, and above all, through the use of blaming categories: denier, flat-earthist, conspiracy theorist, racist, sexist, homophobic ...Put things like this, the main need of those who suffer this blame becomes that of getting away from the slanderous accusation, and then (trying) to go on to explain the reasons for their position. But in the meantime, a good portion of the work focuses on the justificatory part ("provided that I am not a denier", "given that I am not a conspiracy theorist" etc.) on which the counterpart is cunningly ruthless, and this alone weakens the validity of the argument proposed. , and this is already a good advantage given to the opponent who in the meantime takes time and distracts attention from the topic in question (talk shows are wonderful examples of how this manipulative technique works).
The capacity of the "system" is today far more manipulative than in the past, for the simple reason that this capitalism is no longer interested only in the domination of the sphere of production relations but in the invasion and control of the most intimate folds of life of individuals. To match it to the needs of its operating mechanism. Which, let us remember, by now quite explicitly considers mankind an annoying obstacle (transhumanism), which unfortunately it cannot do without, but in any case to be resized both in numbers (neo Malthusianism) and in its importance (aspecism).