Lockdowns and masks do nothing to prevent the spread of the dread coof:
A group of researchers at Stanford published a peer-reviewed study earlier this month assessing the impact of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders — what they refer to as non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in early 2020. The study did not find evidence to support that NPIs were effective in preventing the spread.
“In summary, we fail to find strong evidence supporting a role for more restrictive NPIs in the control of COVID in early 2020,” the study concludes. “We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures. The data cannot fully exclude the possibility of some benefits. However, even if they exist, these benefits may not match the numerous harms of these aggressive measures. More targeted public health interventions that more effectively reduce transmissions may be important for future epidemic control without the harms of highly restrictive measures.”
The study was co-authored by Dr. Eran Bendavid, Professor John P.A. Ioannidis, Christopher Oh, and Jay Bhattacharya. The lead author, Dr. Benadavid, is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Stanford. The other authors collectively work in departments including the Department of Epidemiology and the Department of Biomedical Data Science. According to the Spectator, the study was published in the European Journal of Clinical Observation.
The group studied the effects of NPIs in 10 countries: England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the United States, which had more restrictive measures, were compared to Sweden and South Korea, where measures were less restrictive. After they accounted for the less restrictive NPIs in South Korea and Sweden, they found “no clear, significant beneficial effect of more restrictive NPIs on case growth in any country.”
Of course, we can expect this study to be retracted once SCIENCE discovers that President Trump is still the President on January 21.