[1andrew1]

Great and comprehensive FullFact repudiatuion of the lockdown sceptics. This is a small excerpt.

Do lockdowns stop Covid, generally?

In his video of 8 September, Mr [Ivor]Cummins also insists that the spring lockdown did not cause the subsequent fall in deaths or severe illness. In a (now deleted) talkRADIO interview on 6 October with Julia Hartley Brewer, who shared his original video, he said: “Since April the data is pretty clear… This is real world empirical data analysed to check the effect of lockdown, and almost without exception, there is no correlation. And this is published in the Lancet, and there’s five published papers now.

“There’s essentially no substantial connection between lockdown and outcomes of ICU and mortality. That’s a reality.”

Later, he said again: “There is no credible publication post-hoc, or after the event during the summer, that has really claimed that lockdowns are in any way effective.”

This is simply untrue. A research paper published in June in Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world, concludes: “Our results show that major non-pharmaceutical interventions—and lockdowns in particular—have had a large effect on reducing transmission.”

Another in Science in July said: “Focusing on COVID-19 spread in Germany, we detected change points in the effective growth rate that correlate well with the times of publicly announced interventions.”

Another in the BMJ said: “Earlier implementation of lockdown was associated with a larger reduction in the incidence of covid-19.”

https://fullfact.org/health/can-we-b...down-sceptics/