The Covid lockdowns may not have been remotely effective, but at least they harmed millions of people and created long-lasting negative impacts that we’re still dealing with today.
That’s the conclusion of a massive new body of research into the nonsensical policies promoted by the public health “expert” class, promoted by their media partners, and enacted by incompetent, cowardly politicians.
Mask mandates had been thoroughly discouraged by decades of pre-Covid pandemic planning. There was no body of research supporting the closing of certain businesses at different hours of the day, as many jurisdictions demanded.
No studies were conducted on the reduction of infection rates resulting from placing directional arrows on the floors of grocery stores to direct people through aisles in predetermined patterns.
There were no randomized controlled trials on closing skate parks and beaches, arresting people surfing alone in the ocean, restricting capacity to random percentages based on inaccurate assumptions of community spread.
We had no idea whether closing schools would be effective or “save lives,” but we did it anyway. We didn’t know if vaccine passports would actually have a meaningful impact on community spread, yet we were encouraged to push that too.
All these “interventions” started with little-to-no evidence. That’s bad enough. What makes it much worse? That we implemented them all with zero consideration of possible side effects resulting from those policies.
Lockdowns were an unprecedented incursion on freedom and liberty. What would that do to society, the economy, mental health, and so on? It appeared that no one involved gave those considerations a second thought, and now we’re paying the price.
No studies were conducted on the reduction of infection rates resulting from placing directional arrows on the floors of grocery stores to direct people through aisles in predetermined patterns.
There were no randomized controlled trials on closing skate parks and beaches, arresting people surfing alone in the ocean, restricting capacity to random percentages based on inaccurate assumptions of community spread.
We had no idea whether closing schools would be effective or “save lives,” but we did it anyway. We didn’t know if vaccine passports would actually have a meaningful impact on community spread, yet we were encouraged to push that too.
All these “interventions” started with little-to-no evidence. That’s bad enough. What makes it much worse? That we implemented them all with zero consideration of possible side effects resulting from those policies.
Lockdowns were an unprecedented incursion on freedom and liberty. What would that do to society, the economy, mental health, and so on? It appeared that no one involved gave those considerations a second thought, and now we’re paying the price.
Horrifying New Research into Damage from Covid Lockdowns
A massive new systematic review of over 130 studies of Covid policies was published recently in Health Affairs Scholar by writers from the Department of Health Policy, Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health in Indianapolis, synthesizing the research into ancillary outcomes from lockdowns, school closures, and other mandates. The goal of this systematic review was to find the “unintended health effects” resulting from those policies. Essentially, putting Covid aside, what were the results when it came to various important measures of health?
They write that while policymakers and public health authorities have produced years of reports and lectures on the importance of mandates and lockdowns in reducing viral transmission, there’s a large “gap in the literature” regarding what other impacts may have resulted from “shelter-in-place/stay-at-home orders, workplace closures, and school closures.”
While peer-review isn’t a guarantee of accuracy, all 132 studies included in the analysis were peer-reviewed. Those 132 studies resulted in finding over 450 unique outcomes. And spoiler alert, the overwhelming majority of those outcomes were negative.
What makes their results even more infuriating is that there was, as they explain, “very low quality” evidence that lockdowns would be effective, as well as a “lack of information on potential unintended downstream consequences.” Yet decision-makers plowed forward anyway, despite the “serious ethical, economic, health equity, and human rights concerns” resulting from such policies.
Not to mention that the researchers found that lockdowns had “little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality,” the most important stated goal of lockdowns. Stay home, save lives, the mantra went. Turns out, like so many other government messages, that this was completely and utterly incorrect.
So we’ve established that there was no reduction in Covid mortality from lockdowns, very low quality evidence supporting lockdowns in the first place, and an overwhelming majority of studies found negative side effects from those policies. All great news so far. But it gets even better when examining what those negative side effects actually were, and how widespread those results were.
What they found, from 132 peer-reviewed studies and 450 specific results, was that “over 90% of mental health, obesity-related, and health-related social need outcomes” were impacted by lockdowns. Of the 454 unique measurements from those studies, 75 percent were reported as “detrimental.”
After years of politicians and public health figures extolling the importance of mental health, mental health outcomes in this research were astonishingly bad. They found that 93 percent of mental health outcomes studied were “deemed detrimental.” And that wasn’t a small sample either, as the researchers found that it was the “most frequently studied category.”
If one only uses Google to search outcomes, lockdowns were associated with increased activity for terms like “boredom,” “loneliness,” “sadness,” and “worry.”
There was a significant rise in positive suicide screenings among adolescents and a consistent increase in mental health facility use for diagnoses like panic disorder and severe stress. Incredibly, they found that “quasi-experimental work found that increases in mental health facility use were more strongly associated with the presence of lockdown policies than with the pandemic or illness itself.” That suggests “policy restrictions exerted an independent effect on population well-being.”
Horrifying.
Every Possible Outcome Got Worse Under Lockdowns
So the lockdowns led to increased suicidal ideation, a massive increase in mental health facility usage, rampant loneliness, panic disorder, and had no impact on mortality rates. But the good news doesn’t end there.
As we know, obesity is one of the most harmful physical conditions, resulting with any number of significant health issues. Well, lockdowns helped there too. Of the analyses studying the effect of lockdowns on obesity, outcomes were “overwhelmingly negative,” with “94.3% of analyses reporting detrimental effects.”
In one specific study, there was an astonishing “19-fold increase in obesity risk among children previously classified at normal weight prepandemic.” Another study found a remarkable “tenfold increase in BMI z-score gain among children during school closures.” Great work, “health” experts!
Thanks to delayed healthcare screenings, the review found substantially higher rates of late-stage lung cancer diagnoses. And the breakdown in social order led to increases in trauma-related admissions due to gun and knife violence.
That’s not a surprise, as lockdowns led to massive unemployment and stress over financial stability. Sure enough, when the researchers examined research on those side effects, they found that “100% of outcomes” related to employment, food access, and economic stability were detrimental.
Similarly, childhood development and education also had detrimental outcomes. In 96.6% of studies, there was significant learning loss and disrupted socialization among younger demographics – who were, of course, at essentially zero risk of significant impacts from Covid itself.
For a group who claims to care about “equity,” and trying to force equal outcomes across different racial and ethnic groups, public health experts somehow ignored the inequitable negative side effects from lockdowns.
Vulnerable demographic groups were significantly more likely to report negative outcomes, over 90 percent of the time, than more stable groups. One hundred percent of outcomes for those vulnerable groups were deemed detrimental regarding important health determinants like obesity, food access, and economic stability.
Nailed it again, health equity experts!
So to sum up, we had no evidence that lockdowns would be effective.
We had no research or consideration for the negative outcomes that would result from lockdowns and they had no impact on Covid mortality.
In postmortem research, the overwhelming majority of studied individual outcomes were negative or detrimental, in important categories like mental health, physical health, economic conditions, and obesity.
And for a group that claims to care about “equity,” public health policies overwhelmingly impacted already vulnerable demographic groups the most.
It’s hard to imagine a more comprehensive and thorough repudiation of the Anthony Fauci Covid doctrine.
Do whatever Fauci says, never consider the consequences, then demean and label any and all critics, never admit wrongdoing or take accountability for the damage you’ve caused.
“The Science” in a nutshell.
Ian Miller is the author of “Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates.” His work has been featured on national television broadcasts, national and international news publications and referenced in multiple best selling books covering the pandemic. This article was sourced HERE

12 comments:
Why did NZ fare so much better than USA?Most pro maori legislative interventions have been started with little or no evidence to support intended aims.
What was more shocking in my opinion was how almost everyone in nz complied with the madness. If we had all said no, what could they have done?. Supermarkets suddenly employed people from winz as mask gestapo. If your mask had slipped down or you weren't wearing it, you were kicked out of the store. Yet the supermarket trolleys were never washed and customers put their dirty hands all over the fruit and vege. Apparently that was fine, as long as you wore your mask. But this complete lack of common sense was accepted without question by us. I watched what Sweden was doing with no masking, no school closures, and no lockdowns and thought, why aren't we doing that? They had extra protection for the elderly and vulnerable instead.
I blame us for what happened.
Covid became the cover for Ardern to introduce and trial her control policies eg giving Maori the power to man road blocks, mandate jabs for everyone except 11,000 health workers.
And still so few NZers realise just how that evil woman manipulated us.
Yep.... FEAR can stupify... stops brain engaging - nerve stops short of brain, activates endocrine system... [Vagus nerve from the gut runs sex, food and safety, as in earthworms] JA=COVID=WEF JA's degree in "Communication" ie Marketing manipulation = "Selling stuff" Have read Stage 1 books thereon... and dumped the course. EVIL Creature.
It will take New Zealand decades to recover from ardern and her mob's wilful damage.
And they are still here, oblivious.
And all the politicians who complied quite willingly with this insanity.
Those who spoke up at the time (I did) got ostracised, lost friends, and family relationships.
Things don't get nuch more serious than that.
So, who pays?
No bastard.
Ameni
No mention of mortality or long term health impacts (actual) from Covid in NZ vs other countries in this article, or the economic benefit of fewer deaths tells you all you need to know about this author.
You will hear Jacinda fans going on about how she saved 20,000 lives during Covid. The recently released official review of NZ’s COVID response to a certain extent endorses this . Any comments?
You sound like you're busting to tell us, Anon @ 12.34pm. Please, go ahead.
Thank god National weren’t in power at the time!
National’s true colours on the cost of human lives: A Labour government brought in world-leading anti-smoking legislation. The National-led coalition killed that legislation and gave multi-million dollar tax breaks to a tobacco company. Smoking kills about five thousand New Zealanders a year.
I don't buy into the argument that Jacinda was evil, nor do I think she was anything more than the spokesperson for the senior ministers who ran the Labour Government. She was just a well-intended woke with no management experience and a commitment to protecting Maori. Ian is right that lockdowns did more harm than good, and I think they were extended in places like Auckland simply to accommodate the slow uptake of vaccination by Maori in particular. Friends I speak to maintain that we will be much more sensible and much less alarmist when the next pandemic comes around. I say the opposite - we will do exactly the same, but worse - out of a combination of conformist behaviour and Group Think. Voices like Ian's will be drowned out by the mass hysteria.
"...how almost everyone in nz complied with the madness."
I remember it vividly, along with the censoriousness directed at anybody who stepped out of line.
From the beginning, I'd figured out that the whole thing was being politicised. So I refused to watch any of that stuff from the Beehive. The podium of truth, was it?
I paid little to no attention to any of the publicity about the coronavirus (including that stupid name), to the great benefit of my mental health.
I'd spent many years in the allied health services, so I knew that all that stuff about masking was bollix. Masks don't protect people from anything much after about the first hour of wearing them. So. I wore a mask when I had to, but not when I didn't. And sometimes not even when I was supposed to. I found them very uncomfortable to wear. They caused my spouse to have asthma symptoms.
We went to the supermarket together. When staff tried to stop us, we pointed out that we lived together. Later, we joined the queue separately, and linked up once we were inside. I noticed many other people doing the same.
We had the vaccinations, but I won't have any boosters. While I myself had no reaction to them, a young and otherwise healthy family member had a severe reaction to each of them. The last one was the worst. I've advised said family member never to have another. I'm usually a fan of vaccination, but not that one.
For some reason, one of us was receiving coronavirus updates from Queensland. That state's figures were much, much lower than those here in NZ. But of course the msm never reported on that!
I remain very angry about the border closure here. It did so much damage. In my view, we're still experiencing the consequences of that disastrous policy. I doubt this country will recover in my lifetime.
"...how she saved 20,000 lives during Covid. The recently released official review of NZ’s COVID response to a certain extent endorses this."
Those figures of lives saved were only ever an estimate. In any event, I'd heard that the expected death toll just in the Wellington area was about 80000. Of course we got nowhere near that.
In 2021, I think, the MoH acknowledged that there had been only 25 or so deaths from (rather than with) coronavirus. And those figures were still much higher than for Queensland at the same time .
There was never any epidemiological justification for the draconian policies to which we were subjected. We'd have been much better off, had we followed Sweden's example, but with extra protections for rest homes and the like. Or Queensland's example, come to that.
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