“Lockdowns, school closures, and other mandates were catastrophic errors, pushed with remarkable fervor by public health authorities at all levels,” concludes a report on the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The report, titled “COVID Lessons Learned: Retrospective After Four Years,” by Scott W. Atlas, M.D., Steve H. Hanke, Ph.D., Philip G. Kerpen, and Casey B. Mulligan, Ph.D., was published by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CTUP) in March. The authors examined pandemic policies from health, economic, educational, and civil liberty perspectives. ‘Stoked and Amplified Fear’. Government officials ignored the experience with previous epidemics, says the CTUP report. “[C]ommunities respond best to pandemics when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted,” states the report. “During COVID, the public health establishment followed the opposite principle: they intentionally stoked and amplified fear, which overlaid enormous economic, social, educational, and health harms of the virus itself.” Among the disruptions, lockdowns put “over 49 million Americans out of work, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) survey data, and over two million remaining out of work due to COVID closures as recently as July 2022.”

‘Excess Deaths from Lockdowns’. Social isolation and the inability to access care for other conditions led to deaths from causes other than the SARS-CoV-2 virus, say the authors. “Non-COVID excess deaths from lockdowns and societal panic are estimated at about 100,000 per year in the United States and zero in non-lockdown Sweden,” states the report.

‘Caused Serious Harm’. Even though it was known by spring and summer 2020 that COVID primarily threatened the elderly and people with preexisting conditions, teachers unions insisted schools remain closed. “The harms to children of closing in-person schooling are dramatic and irrefutable,” the authors state. “The shutdowns caused serious harm to children, including poor learning, school drop-outs, social isolation, mental illness, drug abuse, suicidal ideation, and 300,000 cases of child abuse unreported in spring 2020.”

Mask Mania. Mask mandates ignored the science on masking, say the authors of the CTUP study. “There was no high-quality evidence in support of community masking for respiratory illnesses in spring 2020; in fact, the randomized clinical trials regarding masking for influenza found it to be ineffective for protecting the wearer and for preventing spread,” the report states. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has yet to revise its position on masking.

Were Lockdowns a Test? “Scientists used the media to bully others, and the media gave them the imprimatur of ‘the experts’ to disparage the opposing views,” states the report. The CTUP study confirms what many experts and clinicians already knew, says Marilyn M. Singleton, M.D., a California-based physician. “Pursuant to a recent lawsuit settlement, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) rescinded their ‘you are not a horse’ campaign against ivermectin, a Nobel Prize-winning medication approved for veterinary and human use, as part of an alternative COVID treatment program,” said Singleton. “For the government to ignore the social and medical meltdowns unfolding before their eyes leads me to believe the public health response was a test of the limits of government control, not measures instituted for the benefit of the public.”

Public Not Informed. The mandates went against the science, says Jane Orient, M.D., executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. “For all the posturing about evidence-based medicine, public health diktats went against evidence that harms greatly exceeded benefits, if any,” said Orient. “People must be allowed to decide on the precautions they want to take, and they should be able to rely on health authorities for accurate information instead of fearmongering.”

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