Having railed against the shutdown mentality from the start of the epidemic, knowing it would be disastrous for society, I am not surprised to now see extensive research showing how damaging those policies were for all aspects of social life. A week or so ago we had a piece of research summarizing all of that damage. Now we have another meta-analysis, from the Institute of Economic Affairs, indicating that the lockdowns simply did not work. Screening almost 20,000 studies, they came up with 22 of sufficient quality to include in their work. Needless to say, the obvious conclusion was no significant impact on spread and mortality, while causing a number of other harms. (IEA Report)
