Lockdowns: 'Little Effect On The Spread Of Coronavirus

U.S. Professors Say Lockdowns ‘Had Little Effect On The Spread Of The Coronavirus’

LifeSiteNews

Three U.S. professors argue that government-“mandated lockdowns” in the name of stopping COVID-19 had “little effect on the spread of the coronavirus.”

“If lockdowns really altered the course of this pandemic, then coronavirus case counts should have clearly dropped whenever and wherever lockdowns took place.

“The effect should have been obvious, though with a time lag,” wrote professors Jay W. Richards, William M. Briggs, and Douglas Axe in an October 4 report published in the National Review.

“It takes time for new coronavirus infections to be officially counted, so we would expect the numbers to plummet as soon as the waiting time was over …

“To judge from the evidence, the answer is clear: Mandated lockdowns had little effect on the spread of the coronavirus.”

In the National Review report, the professors asked, “Did the lockdowns make a difference?”

They provided evidence through charts for 13 U.S. states with and without lockdowns.

“The charts … show the daily case curves for the United States as a whole and for 13 U.S. states. As in almost every country, we consistently see a steep climb as the virus spreads, followed by a transition to a flatter curve.

“At some point, the curves always slope downward, though this wasn’t obvious for all states until the summer,” the professors wrote.

“The lockdowns can’t be the cause of these transitions. In the first place, the transition happened even in places without lockdown orders (see Iowa and Arkansas).

“And where there were lockdowns, the transitions tended to occur well before the lockdowns could have had any serious effect.”

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