Elsewhere, I have very briefly surveyed the data on the harms done by lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But how did lockdowns come about in the first place?
Prior to 2020, scientists knew for decades that highly restrictive pandemic measures were a mistake. As one of the most influential papers on this topic published by experts at Johns Hopkins University in 2006 warned:
“Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”
It is shocking indeed just how much lockdowns flew in the face of scientific consensus, and just how much several decades of the scientific literature, all the way through early 2020, were opposed to them.
As Greg Ip wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
“Prior to Covid-19, lockdowns weren’t part of the standard epidemic tool kit, which was primarily designed with flu in mind. During the 1918–1919 flu pandemic, some American cities closed schools, churches and theaters, banned large gatherings and funerals and restricted store hours. But none imposed stay-at-home orders or closed all nonessential businesses. No such measures were imposed during the 1957 flu pandemic, the next-deadliest one; even schools stayed open.”
As a very prominent team of scientists at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health wrote in 2006:
“As experience shows, there is no basis for recommending quarantine either of groups or individuals. The problems in implementing such measures are formidable, and secondary effects of absenteeism and community disruption as well as possible adverse consequences, such as loss of public trust in government and stigmatization of quarantined people and groups, are likely to be considerable.”
As a report from the World Health Organization report put it in 2006:
“Reports from the 1918 influenza pandemic indicate that social-distancing measures did not stop or appear to dramatically reduce transmission.”
As John Barry, who wrote the authoritative account of the 1918 influenza pandemic, wrote in 2009:
“Historical data clearly demonstrate that quarantine does not work unless it is absolutely rigid and complete.”
Discussing the failure of military experiments using lockdowns in military bases to prevent respiratory viral outbreaks, Barry added:
“If a military camp cannot be successfully quarantined in wartime, it is highly unlikely a civilian community can be quarantined during peacetime.”
In 2019, as a report for the World Health Organization would state:
“Home quarantine of exposed individuals to reduce transmission is not recommended because there is no obvious rationale for this measure, and there would be considerable difficulties in implementing it.”
That same year, a report by a team in Johns Hopkins would say:
“In the context of a high-impact respiratory pathogen, quarantine may be the least likely NPI to be effective in controlling the spread due to high transmissibility.”
As Anthony Fauci said about lockdowns in January 2020:
“Historically when you shut things down it doesn’t have a major effect.”
On March 2, 2020, more than 800 public health elites signed an open letter to Vice President Mike Pence encouraging him to take a moderate approach to the pandemic, consistent with the decades of scientific consensus in public health. Signatories of the Pence Letter included noted Yale Professor of Public Health Gregg Gonsalves, professor and science communicator Esther Choo, Harvard Professor Marc Lipsitch, Dean of Emory School of Medicine Carlos Del Rios, Harvard School of Public Health Professor Julia Marcus, future vaccine mandate lawyer and Professor of UC Hastings School of Law Dorit Reiss, future Dean of the Yale School of Public Health Megan Ranney, and future CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.
In the Pence Letter, they wrote:
"Mandatory quarantine, regional lockdowns, and travel bans have been used to address the risk of COVID-19 in the US and abroad. But they are difficult to implement, can undermine public trust, have large societal costs and, importantly, disproportionately affect the most vulnerable segments in our communities."
Authors also exhorted policymakers to: not make “misleading or unfounded statements”; not suppress or manipulate information; not “scapegoat and discriminate against individuals or groups”; “refrain from providing false reassurances”; and “allow people to voluntarily cooperate with public health advice”. Authors also made clear that: “Mandatory quarantine, regional lockdowns, and travel bans… are difficult to implement, can undermine public trust, have large societal costs and, importantly, disproportionately affect the most vulnerable segments in our communities,” and that “voluntary self-isolation measures are more likely to induce cooperation and protect public trust than coercive measures.”
Yet, just one week later, the public health community reversed its positions. One by one, countries began to implement mandatory quarantine, travel bans, and draconian national lockdowns, intentionally mislead the public, promote interventions that were not supported by science, and adopt a politicized, quasi-militarized, authoritarian approach to managing the pandemic. Those who still advocated for the principles contained in the Pence Letter were accused of misinformation and confronted with severe social and professional penalties, while many who signed the Pence Letter fell into line and promoted the pandemic policy du jour.
Why did this occur? This is something that must be understood in parts.
Thanks for this great set of pertinent quotes.
As early as 25 March, 2020, knowledgeable people have been trying to raise awareness of the need for proper vitamin D3 supplementation to tackle COVID-19 - both to reduce the risk of severe symptoms and to reduce disease intensity in general, which has the direct effect of greatly reducing transmission by reducing the average number of viruses shed per infected person. I started writing to the WHO and other authorities in mid-March, and started my first website on this later in March. Please see the research cited and discussed at: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/.
John Umhau MD, MPH, CPE, of Maryland, https://www.verywellmind.com/john-umhau-4798192 is a retired Commander of the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, who researched vitamin D for decades, and was unable to find any part of the U.S. public health administration which would take a real interest in vitamin D. (He told me this, in personal conversation.) He wrote about vitamin D and COVID-19 on 2020-03-25 in the prominent medical website MedPage Today: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85596
In January 2021 he wrote, with Richard H. Carmona, MD, MPH (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Carmona), Vatsal G. Thakkar, MD, an op-ed for a major newspaper (I don't recall which one, but it was probably the New York Times) on the need for proper vitamin D supplementation to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. It was rejected, despite it being co-written by Richard Carmona, the 17th Surgeon General of the United States, from 2002 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. So they put it in MedPage Today: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/90530
40 to 60 ng/mL circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D has been known since at least 2008 as the level which everyone should aim to attain: https://www.grassrootshealth.net/project/our-scientists/ .
Even now, after 4 years of COVID-19 killing, directly and/or through the corrupted, deadly, pandemic responses, tens of millions of people, only a subset of the population understand the need for proper vitamin D3 supplementation in order that the immune system can work properly.
There is almost no vitamin D3 in food, and ultraviolet B light, which can generate it in the skin, is not available all year round and always damages DNA, so raising the risk of skin cancer.
A significant step in raising awareness of the need for proper vitamin D3 supplementation to enable the immune system to work properly was Dr Pierre Kory's interview with Tucker Carlson: https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1768033041568727391 (3.8M views. Transcript of the ivermectin and vitamin D3 part of the interview https://nutritionmatters.substack.com/p/dr-pierre-kory-talks-with-tucker.) He states that "They are terrified of vitamin D" - and then cites Bill Grant's 2008 article on the suppression of vitamin D for decades, using the same tactics as Pierre Kory observed regarding ivermectin: "Vitamin D acceptance delayed by Big Pharma following the Disinformation Playbook" Orthomolecular Medicine News Service 2018-10-01 https://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v14n22.shtml.
The situation is extremely serious, but has been the case in many aspects of health policy since before the COVID-19 pandemic: The authorities, with the connivance or at least support of the majority of medical professionals and the mainstream media, are in some important respects, acting in ways which violate proper scientific and moral principles and have the pervasive effect of harming and killing the public, as well as misleading us about what is really needed to be healthy.
Perhaps because of this:
"As of March 13, 2020 the National Security Council (NSC) was officially in charge of the US government’s Covid policy."
https://brownstone.org/articles/governments-national-security-arm-led-the-covid-response/