“Lockdowns, school closures, and other mandates were catastrophic errors, pushed with remarkable fervor by public health authorities at all levels,” concludes a report on the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The report, titled “COVID Lessons Learned: Retrospective After Four Years,” by Scott W. Atlas, M.D., Steve H. Hanke, Ph.D., Philip G. Kerpen, and Casey B. Mulligan, Ph.D., was published by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CTUP) in March.
The authors examined pandemic policies from health, economic, educational, and civil liberty perspectives.
‘Stoked and Amplified Fear’
Government officials ignored the experience with previous epidemics, says the CTUP report.
“[C]ommunities respond best to pandemics when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted,” states the report. “During COVID, the public health establishment followed the opposite principle: they intentionally stoked and amplified fear, which overlaid enormous economic, social, educational, and health harms of the virus itself.”
Among the disruptions, lockdowns put “over 49 million Americans out of work, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey data, and over two million remaining out of work due to COVID closures as recently as July 2022.”
‘Excess Deaths from Lockdowns’
Social isolation and the inability to access care for other conditions led to deaths from causes other than the SARS-CoV-2 virus, say the authors.
“Non-COVID excess deaths from lockdowns and societal panic are estimated at about 100,000 per year in the United States and zero in non-lockdown Sweden,” states the report.
The lockdowns “were realized around the time when hospitalization peaked, which due to the time-lag between infection and serious disease, necessarily occurs well after the infective peak. They were timed to take credit for declining waves, but rarely had any discernable causal impact.”
‘Caused Serious Harm’
Even though it was known by spring and summer 2020 that COVID primarily threatened the elderly and people with preexisting conditions, teachers unions insisted schools remain closed.
“The harms to children of closing in-person schooling are dramatic and irrefutable,” the authors state. “The shutdowns caused serious harm to children, including poor learning, school drop-outs, social isolation, mental illness, drug abuse, suicidal ideation, and 300,000 cases of child abuse unreported in spring 2020.”
Health authorities ignored differences in severity and fatality risk between young and old, state the authors.
“One of the most striking features of the earliest COVID morbidity and mortality data was a profound differential in risk between the old and the young,” write the authors. “When specific populations are known to have a high risk of death or serious illness, a strategic use of resources to heighten their protection and awareness should be employed.”
Mask Mania
Mask mandates ignored the science on masking, say the authors of the CTUP study.
“There was no high-quality evidence in support of community masking for respiratory illnesses in spring 2020; in fact, the randomized clinical trials regarding masking for influenza found it to be ineffective for protecting the wearer and for preventing spread,” the report states. “Unfortunately, rather than commission randomized controlled trials to produce high-quality evidence on masking with respect to SARS-CoV2, global and U.S. public health authorities overstated the benefits of masking and persisted even as evidence to the contrary accumulated.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has yet to revise its position on masking. “The CDC continues to recommend, contrary to evidence, masking for respiratory viruses, undermining its credibility,” states the report.
Were Lockdowns a Test?
The authors say dissenting views were suppressed during the pandemic.
“Scientists used the media to bully others, and the media gave them the imprimatur of ‘the experts’ to disparage the opposing views,” states the report.
The CTUP study confirms what many experts and clinicians already knew, says Marilyn M. Singleton, M.D., a California-based physician.
“Pursuant to a recent lawsuit settlement, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) rescinded their ‘you are not a horse’ campaign against ivermectin, a Nobel Prize-winning medication approved for veterinary and human use, as part of an alternative COVID treatment program,” said Singleton. “For the government to ignore the social and medical meltdowns unfolding before their eyes leads me to believe the public health response was a test of the limits of government control, not measures instituted for the benefit of the public.”
Public Not Informed
The mandates went against the science, says Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.
“For all the posturing about evidence-based medicine, public health diktats went against evidence that harms greatly exceeded benefits, if any,” said Orient. “People must be allowed to decide on the precautions they want to take, and they should be able to rely on health authorities for accurate information instead of fearmongering.”
“Businesses were often subjected to costly but useless regulations, like the 6-foot distancing, while engineering solutions that would also be effective against other risks were neglected—for example, better ventilation, consideration of UV lighting, use of ozone disinfection in public transportation,” said Orient.
“People were not informed of the need for adequate vitamin D and zinc levels, the effectiveness of Betadine or peroxide gargles or nasal swabs, or the value of prophylactic or early use of hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin,” said Orient. “Hundreds of thousands of lives may have been lost for lack of early treatment of COVID and neglect of treatment of other conditions, as well as from lockdowns.”
Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph.D. (bcohen@nationalcenter.org) is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.
Internet info:
Scott W. Atlas, M.D., Steve H. Hanke, Ph.D., Philip G. Kerpen, and Casey B. Mulligan, Ph.D.,
“COVID Lessons Learned: Retrospective After Four Years,” Committee to Unleash Prosperity,
March 2024: https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/240313_CTUP_COVIDCommitteeReport_Doc.pdf
So where does it go now? Unfornately down the American memory hole. The average American is so pathetic.
it is astonishing to me that most American Christians are worshiping Trump, who took money from Big Pharma and put out the “Warp Speed bioweapon,” he is still to this day saying the clot shot is a good thing and safe and effective and get your booster !
It seems that most who took the shot, despite having a loved one die from it or even being injured themselves, have had their frontal lobe altered to the point they cannot reason or discern and they take the boosters.
When will the madness stop, we are still giving this gene altering therapy to children !
The draconian lockdowns and mandates were not errors, they were well thought out control mechanisms. Their purpose was to isolate people, create despondency, confusion and most of all, fear. Keeping people from assembling, socializing, and expressing their political voice during an election year was critical. The abject fear of a killer virus made selling vote (cheat) by mail very easy. Government and health “experts” droning on with propaganda readily disseminated by their media co-conspirators enabled the initiation of the Great Reset, kicked off by the theft of the 2020 presidential election. It was a scamdemic or perhaps more accurately, a plandemic, but not a pandemic.
There were a surprisingly large number of us — physicians — who were making these points as early as 2020! Some of us (yours truly) were even publicly speaking about it when we were given the opportunity. Here in Dallas, that was what I was doing at the Bastiat Society.
Unfortunately, we were either either patronized or ridiculed by most of our colleagues, and to varying degrees it cost us professionally.
But most people never seem to remember when the experts are wrong. They only remember that they are the “experts”.