Damage from Lockdowns
Health
During the lockdowns, a broad spectrum of medical professionals has observed that people were not receiving proper medical treatment. It is believed that this has led to an increase in deaths from heart attacks[1], cancer, diabetes and more.[2] The UK experienced a dramatic increase in dementia deaths during the lockdown.[3] Fully two-thirds of excess deaths in nursing homes were not COVID related[4], while at the same time, about 40% of hospital beds remained unoccupied.[5]
There has been a significant increase in people dying at home from non-COVID causes as well,[6] including depression and other mental health issues.[7] In Australia, from March to August 2020, six times as many people died from suicide than from COVID.[8] In Japan, it stands at eight times.[9] Twenty-eight percent of parents in quarantine with their children are later diagnosed with a trauma-related health disorder.[10]In Israel, domestic violence reports increased by 95%,[11] and there was a 40% increase in anxiety and depression during the lockdown.[12] By October 2020 after a steady increase, fully 20% of the Israeli public had been diagnosed with high or very high levels of depression[13] and 30% with high or extremely high anxiety.[14] Even the elderly, who are at the highest risk from COVID, led protests against the “lockdowns”, stating that they’d rather die from COVID than from loneliness.[15] A meta-analysis of over 100 studies on the cost/benefits of lockdowns concluded that "Lockdowns are not just an inefficient policy, they must rank as one of the greatest peacetime policy disasters of all time."[16]
See COVID and kids for more on the negative effects on kids.
Civil and human rights
Under the guise of fighting COVID, governments have greatly expanded their power over their citizens. Emergency order after emergency order has severely encroached on personal liberties, in a way that was unthinkable before. The US Attorney General at the time agreed, saying that lockdowns and associated policies were one of the “greatest intrusions on civil liberties in American history”.[17]
Across the world, freedom of religion was severely restricted by the closure of places of worship and the limiting of the number of worshipers that can gather either indoors or outdoors. By November 2020 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down this restriction concluding that the state’s closure of places of worship violated freedom of religion since the state considered them “non-essential” while permitting other facilities to remain open.[18]
Government restrictions on free speech and criticism of the government were also imposed in at least 72 countries.[19] Freedom of assembly was restricted by limiting the kinds and sizes of gatherings, including those in one’s own home.
Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of people have been detained and held without due process, and without judicial appeal simply because they may have been in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID. Israel even utilized its security services to monitor the movement of citizens without the need to procure a court order.[20] Later, the government acknowledged that thousands were falsely sent to isolation because of this system.[21][22] A government audit found that only 3-7% of those sent to isolation by the system eventually tested positive for COVID.[23] Eventually, the Israeli High Court ruled against the government’s surveillance program. [24]
Governments continued to mandate the wearing of intrusive medical devices (masks) based on little research, even after they proved ineffective at preventing further waves of infection.[25] Governments restricted travel unless travellers submitted to an invasive PCR test[26] even though the tests were unreliable.[27] The Supreme Court of Portugal ruled that the test was not sufficiently reliable and resulting quarantines were unlawful.[28]
While most courts did not overturn the lockdown measures, there have been a number of court rulings that did strike down various lockdown measures including in Brussels,[29] Germany, [30] The Netherlands, [31] Madrid,[32] Pennsylvania, [33] Michigan,[34] and Wisconsin.[35]
Economic
The economy worldwide has taken a substantial hit from the COVID lockdowns. The United Nations (UN) estimates that 225 million people across the planet will starve, as a result of COVID’s economic impact.[36] The global debt in 2020 rose by $24 trillion (355% of GDP), a level surpassing World War II.[37] In the USA, 7 million people already fell into poverty[38] with children comprising the highest numbers.[39] Months after the start of the disastrous policy of locking down, even the UN now admits that lockdowns just make the poor... poorer.[40] Later the WHO also stated that lockdowns should be avoided.[41]A meta-analysis of over 100 studies on the costs vs benefits of lockdowns concluded that “it is possible that lockdown will go down as one of the greatest peacetime policy failures in modern history.”[42]
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Footnotes:
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/27/heart-attacks-detected-treated-fell-40-per-cent-covid-pandemic/
[2] 16,000 people died because they didn't get medical care between March 23 and May 1”
[3] “Extra 10,000 dementia deaths in England and Wales in April”
[4] “Staggering number” of extra deaths in community is not explained by covid-19”
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1931
[5] “NHS hospitals have four times more empty beds than normal”
[6] “Between March and September 2020, there were 24,387 more deaths in England than expected in private home”
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54598728
[7] “The psychological impact of quarantine”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30460-8/fulltext
[8] There’s been over 1,200 suicides since March compared to just over 200 deaths with the virus.
[9] “self-inflicted deaths were up 600 year on year, with female suicides, about a third of the total, surging over 80%”
[10] “This is arguably the largest psychological experiment ever conducted”
[11] “Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel (ARCCI) saw a 95% increase in reporting”
[12] “Haifa University reports a 300% increase in requests for psychological treatment”
https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/S1eZC9OHw
[13] “15% increase in referrals to psychiatric clinics since pandemic’s start”
[14] “Just 5% of the 804-strong sample think health represents the biggest threat”
http://www.timesofisrael.com/pandemic-plunging-israelis-to-depression-depleting-bounce-back-ability/
[15] “Rather die from COVID than loneliness”
[16] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13571516.2021.1976051
[17] “Greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history” other than slavery”
[18] “Strikes at the very heart of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty”
https://agudah.org/high-court-victory-for-religious-liberty/
[19] “Since the coronavirus outbreak began, the condition of democracy and human rights has grown worse in 80 countries”
https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-report/2020/democracy-under-lockdown
[20] “Government okays mass surveillance of Israelis’ phones”
[21] “Over 12,000 mistakenly quarantined by phone tracking, Health Ministry admits
[22] “They have no means of appealing the order”
[23] “Shin Bet sent between three to eight times as many people into quarantine unnecessarily when compared to epidemiological investigations”
[24] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/03/01/972560038/israels-supreme-court-ends-spy-agency-cellphone-tracking-of-covid-19-infections
[25] Charts showing infections and mask mandates
https://rationalground.com/mask-charts/
[26] “Entry to those areas will be allowed for those who underwent a coronavirus test during the preceding 72 hours”
[27] “PCR test does not necessarily mean the virus is present, infectious, or viable”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/292466
[28] “Portuguese Court Rules PCR Tests “Unreliable” & Quarantines “Unlawful””
[29] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=https://www.lecho.be/economie-politique/belgique/federal/le-gouvernement-va-en-appel-de-la-decision-qui-juge-les-mesures-covid-illegales/10294940.html
[30] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-germany-meat-guete-idUSKBN2472BW
[31] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210216-dutch-court-orders-government-to-lift-covid-curfew
[32] https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-spanish-court-overturns-madrid-lockdown-order/a-55195457
[33] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/09/14/pennsylvania-coronavirus-restrictions-struck-down-tom-wolf-stay-at-home-order-federal-court/#3d3a2f294bdf
Ruling: https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/butler-v-wolf.pdf
[34] https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/michigan-supreme-court-strikes-down-whitmers-virus-orders-gov-fires-back
[35] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-wisconsin-idUSKBN22Q04H
[36] “A series of human tragedies more brutal and destructive than any of the direct health impacts of the virus”
[37] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-debt-iif-idUSKBN2AH285
[38] “8 million Have Slipped into Poverty Since May”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/us/politics/federal-aid-poverty-levels.html
[39] “2.5 million children falling below the poverty line since May”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/15/us/politics/federal-aid-poverty-levels.html
[40] “Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer,”
[41] “Full-scale lockdowns should be a “very, very last resort.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/15/lockdowns-should-be-last-resort-whos-europe-chief-says.html
[42] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13571516.2021.1976051