{"id":15507,"date":"2026-07-31T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=15507"},"modified":"2026-07-15T12:33:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T16:33:41","slug":"the-lockdown-disaster-must-not-be-forgiven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=15507","title":{"rendered":"The Lockdown Disaster Must Not Be Forgiven"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Authored by Ian Miller via The Brownstone Institute,<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six years since \u201c15 Days to Slow the Spread”,\u00a0data shows why our policies didn’t work.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>That policy has to have been one of the most disastrous in world history, created by \u201cexperts\u201d who took all established pre-pandemic planning documents and tossed them out the window at the first opportunity.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a policy based on inaccurate reports out of China, which claimed that their lockdowns effectively stamped out transmission of Covid-19 within a matter of days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a policy that ignored solid research \u2013 from established epidemiologists like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya \u2013 which found that the coronavirus had already spread much more widely than previously realized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must be noted forever that lockdowns and the associated mask mandates<\/a>, vaccine passports, and school closures continued in some places for several years.<\/strong> The ramifications of those wretched policies will be quite literally endless. It\u2019s not an exaggeration to say that lockdowns, our policies, and responses have quite literally changed the course of world history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One would think that there would definitely be a concerted effort to understand whether such policies were effective or not. Whether approaching respiratory viruses with authoritarian crackdowns on businesses and schools was necessary to save lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet six years later, there\u2019s unfortunately very little interest in examining those questions. And when you understand the data from Sweden, you will see exactly why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Study on Swedish Approach to Covid Shows Lockdowns Didn\u2019t Work<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

A study published in PubMed<\/a> examined the Swedish approach to Covid policy, relative to its European counterparts, primarily because Sweden did not rely on lockdowns in response to the pandemic, but instead used \u201cvoluntary and sustainable mitigation recommendations,\u201d the study says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite a \u201cmajority of Swedes\u201d supporting those policies, \u201cthis approach faced rapid and continuous criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That criticism came primarily from public health figures such as, surprise, surprise, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who criticized Sweden repeatedly for going against the herd.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve compared us to Sweden, and there are a lot of differences,\u201d he said during a Senate Committee hearing in September 2020. \u201cBut compare Sweden\u2019s death rate to other comparable Scandinavian countries. It\u2019s worse. So I don\u2019t think it\u2019s appropriate to compare Sweden with us.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you look at Sweden, they are in some trouble,\u201d Fauci claimed on Good Morning America in late 2020. \u201cThey are starting to see that their death rate is much higher than the surrounding countries of Norway, Denmark, and Finland\u2026They\u2019re starting to see now that they\u2019re having to rethink some of the things they did.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was, of course, not true. <\/strong>They did not \u201crethink\u201d their strategy of light touch recommendations over lockdowns. And comparing Sweden exclusively to its neighbors is an absurd misdirection that no other country was subjected to. But Fauci, obviously never one for honesty or intellectual integrity, represented many public health figures who were anxious to see Sweden fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet as this research shows, reality was precisely the opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study explains that Sweden received criticism for \u201cnot legally enforcing mask-wearing in public spaces,\u201d as well as keeping schools open and \u201cbeing too permissive\u201d with its policies. All the things that we were told were necessary to stop Covid and save lives. The researchers tested these statements using excess mortality data and stringency indices to compare Sweden across the whole of Europe, not just its neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They chose excess mortality because, unlike Covid specific measurements, it\u2019s less subject to bias, differences in testing, and counting, and individual definitions of Covid-caused outcomes. It also accounts for deaths that \u201ccould potentially be indirectly attributed to the negative effects of strict lockdown measures and the overall strain on healthcare systems, leading to reduced access to healthcare for other diseases, among other factors.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turns out that what they discovered was that Sweden vastly outperformed the rest of Europe from 2020-2022, with outcomes that were remarkably similar to the other Nordic countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cAmong 42 European countries, the cumulative excess all-cause mortality from January 2020 to December 2022 ranged from 46 (Luxembourg) to 1,080 (Bulgaria) deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, with a median of 351\/100,000,\u201d they write. \u201cIn Sweden, the excess mortality rate of 158\/100,000 was among the lowest, ranked 37th among 42 countries, and not very different from other Nordic countries: Norway (129), Denmark (97), and Finland (228).\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So why did Sweden underperform in 2020 relative to their neighbors? Likely due, as the study explains, to \u201cmortality displacement due to low all-cause mortality in 2019,\u201d as well as \u201cpoorly organized older adult care structures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does this mean? Essentially, there were significantly fewer deaths from all causes in Sweden in 2019, meaning there were more extremely elderly people alive in 2020 that were susceptible to severe outcomes from Covid. <\/strong>This is reflected in the massive age gradient with Covid-associated deaths. In Sweden, \u201c~40% of the COVID-19-associated deaths were among patients in nursing homes,\u201d the study says, \u201cand 67% of all COVID-19 deaths were among individuals above 80 years of age, representing 10% of all deaths in that age group.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For younger age groups, Covid was mostly a non-issue. \u201cCOVID-19 deaths below 50 years of age represented only 1.2% of all COVID deaths, including 21 individuals below 20 years of age, mostly with underlying co-morbidities, representing 1% of all deaths in that age group.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Effectively, Covid ravaged extremely elderly people, while those under 50, despite the lack of mask mandates and lockdowns, saw very limited impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sweden\u2019s Lack of Lockdowns Led to Better Outcomes<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Equally important, they examined the \u201cstringency index\u201d for countries across Europe, then made a data table comparing that stringency to excess mortality from 2020-2022. Effectively, how strict were a country\u2019s policies, and how much did that matter to reducing excess mortality?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turns out, there\u2019s a definitive, resounding answer which this chart demonstrates perfectly. Countries are plotted based on their stringency index, the x-axis, and excess mortality, the y-axis. The line demonstrates the trend in mortality rates, and there\u2019s virtually no relationship between the severity of policy and preventing excess mortality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The R-squared, effectively the relationship between stringency index and excess mortality, is just 0.14. The closer to 1, the more related stringency is to outcomes. This is 0.14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Countries like Italy and Spain were some of the strictest when it came to lockdowns and mandates, yet ranked near the top in excess mortality rates. The UK, Portugal, the Netherlands and others were significantly more stringent and also had demonstrably worse outcomes. Denmark was the second least strict country and had the best outcomes, at least in this examination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does this tell us? Well, put simply, Fauci was wrong. Sweden did not underperform relative to its neighbors. It did significantly better than the rest of Europe, and of course, the United States. Lockdowns and stringency were not related, whatsoever, to reducing excess mortality. They never mandated masks, one of his chief policy recommendations, and outperformed other countries like Germany which imposed N95-level mandates for months on end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a clear repudiation of the lockdown model. Which is precisely why Sweden\u2019s example is deliberately being ignored today.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because learning the actual results of these historically bad policies requires humility, accountability, and honesty, all qualities that many in public health are truly incapable of possessing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Republished from the author\u2019s Substack<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authored by Ian Miller via The Brownstone Institute, Six years since \u201c15 Days to Slow the Spread”,\u00a0data shows why our policies didn’t work. That policy has to have been one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[162,288,333,445,517],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-face-masks","category-lockdown","category-mortality-morbidity","category-policies-politics","category-school-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15508,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15507\/revisions\/15508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}