Study shows lockdowns did not work

Another study out of Canada reveals that if the goal of the lockdowns was to flatten the COVID curve, they failed miserably. Most of the lockdowns were just theatrics, as governments driven by the fear generated by mainstream media, needed to appear like they were doing something.

In her study, Maria Krylova compared U.S. states with heavy lockdown restrictions with similar states with significantly reduced restrictions: Minnesota vs Wisconsin and California vs Florida.

Krylova discovered that the COVID stats were basically the same. The lockdowns had no meaningful impact on the spread of COVID, despite the fact that the states with fewer lockdown restrictions had more people over the age of 65 than their comparable lockdown state.

She writes:

Once something becomes a habit, it can be hard to break. So it has been with the array of restrictions governments imposed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. What were initially billed as short-term measures to “flatten the curve” morphed into something much bigger and longer-term: comprehensive policies altering nearly every aspect of our lives , imposed by the local premier, governor, or top health official with little reflection and only the barest legislative oversight. “Lockdowns” quickly became conventional wisdom and the accepted ideology of nearly every societal elite. And with many lockdowns or key elements lingering even today, they proved anything but short term.

While aimed at fighting the virus’s spread, the interventions imposed a massive toll in areas including global hunger, domestic abuse, mental and physical health problems, suicides and bankruptcies. Despite these grim consequences and, more recently, the accelerating pace of vaccinations and the gratifying reduction in deaths from Covid-19, many North American governments remain reluctant to ease the restrictions. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mused lately that the Canada-U.S. land border would reopen “eventually”, while some public health figures are now calling for a third lockdown. […]

Two are mid-sized, adjoining Midwest states: Minnesota and Wisconsin. Minnesota had a hard and extended lockdown (many schools are still not open, for example), while Wisconsin had a short lockdown followed by moderate restrictions. The other two are southerly coastal states – California and Florida. California has had a hard and ongoing lockdown, while Florida has sought every opportunity to ease restrictions and reopen. Two other seemingly suitable cases were omitted: New York, a hard-lockdown state, because of its unique circumstances (including heavy mass-transit use in its largest city, and its deadly nursing home scandal), and South Dakota, North America’s only jurisdiction to remain fully open throughout the pandemic, because of its small and non-urbanized population.

	Minnesota Lockdown	Wisconsin	California Lockdown	Florida
COVID case rate by population (%)	8.87%	9.79%	8.95%	9.26%
COVID death rate by population (%)	0.12%	0.13%	0.15%	0.14%
Population over age 65 (%) and most susceptible to COVID	16.3%	17.5%	14.8%	20.9%