More Evidence Accumulates that the Lockdowns Didn't Work

As I previously noted, it's appearing more and more likely the Covid-19 slipped out of a lab. In addition, more and more evidence is coming out showing the lockdowns didn't work. (There have been quite a few studies saying the same thing. This one compares the lockdowns of different states.   

Yes, the states that were hit harder had bigger lockdowns (generally), but the studies above looked at that and didn't find any evidence lockdowns were effective. And even if they were, they would have to be effective ENOUGH to make up for all the economic and mental health damage they caused. A small improvement isn't worth the cost.

In hindsight, this shouldn't have been surprising. Perhaps doing what China did and turning Wuhan into a prison "works" but what we did doesn't. On the other hand, what we did likely made things worse.

For example:
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- Vitamin D deficiency found in 80% of Covid patients (and being locked down isn't a good way to get sun).
- Lack of physical exercise likely increases mortality from Covid.
- Obesity increases mortality (and what did we have to do other than sit around and eat bon bons?).

And it turns out the catching Covid outside is very rare so the more time inside means, well more Covid.

Then, of course, there was the nursing home debacales. Indeed, since about one third of those who died in 2020 from Covid were in nursing homes, and the median age of death from Covid is in the late 70s, a targeted approach was called for. Indeed, the broad approach probably prevented a targeted approach which would have included safeguarding the elderly and cancelling large events for a few months and then just being more cautious and telling people to wash their hands more and the like. Had we done that, we probably would have had less deaths from Covid (or at least not more) without nuking the economy and sending deaths of despair spiraling out of control.

One last point to counter an argument I've seen: The lockdowns did not fail because Americans ignored them. Americans have certainly (and rightfully) grown tired of them. But at the beginning, mobile device location data showed a huge reduction in how much people moved around (although the vast majority of the drop was voluntary and before the stay at home orders).

So it's clear the lockdowns failed and it wasn't for a lack of trying. There will be another pandemic like this one, I certainly hope we don't make the same mistakes.