The Definitive Verdict on the Failure of Lockdowns
By David Biddulph – June 16, 2023
A new book by Steve Hanke, Jonas Herby, and Lars Jonung has been released by the Institute for Economic Affairs in London confirms everything we’ve said in the Hotline for more than three years: lockdowns were a catastrophic failure. Titled Did Lockdowns Work? The Verdict on Covid Restrictions, the book examines the best empirical evidence on lockdowns.
According to Hanke of Johns Hopkins:
“When it comes to COVID, epidemiological models have many things in common: dubious assumptions, hair-raising predictions of disaster that miss the mark, and few lessons learned. “The science of lockdowns is clear; the data are in: the lives saved were a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering collateral costs imposed.”
This chart shows how badly Neil Ferguson’s infamous Imperial College London model missed: the model predicted lockdowns would avoid 1.7 to 2.1 million COVID deaths. The study finds the actual reduction in COVID deaths associated with lockdowns was 4,300 to 15,600.
The full book is available for download here:
