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New Study Concluding Lockdown Prevented 5 Million Infections Has Some Serious Problems

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William Davis Contributor
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Coronavirus lockdowns prevented nearly five million confirmed cases and 60 million infections, according to new academic research published Monday.

The study conducted by Nature looked at over 1,700 local, regional and national “non-pharmaceutical” policy interventions in China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France and the U.S., ultimately concluding that the lockdowns “significantly and substantially slowed the growth” of the virus. (RELATED: The Media’s Coronavirus Concern Trolling Has Disappeared)

“We estimate that across these six countries, interventions prevented or delayed on the order of 62 million confirmed cases, corresponding to averting roughly 530 million total infections,” the study says.

However, the study has come under scrutiny for its omissions and affiliations. The study was aided by the Imperial College, which suggested in March that the U.S. would have to shut down for as many as 18 months to avoid millions of coronavirus deaths, but later backtracked after admitting they overestimated the virus’ reproduction number (R0). Neil Ferguson, the former head of the Imperial College’s coronavirus response, resigned last month as an adviser to U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, after admitting to violating social distancing guidelines to carry on an affair with a married woman.

Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson criticized the Nature study for not disclosing the fatality rate used by the researchers, and also noted that the paper was received on March 22, well before coronavirus cases and deaths peaked in the U.S. (RELATED: Evidence Suggests Kids Are Extremely Low Risk For Coronavirus)

“The authors make NO effort to compare the #COVID spread in countries that DID use lockdowns with those that didn’t… they merely track the infection rate by day and assume any changes resulted from lockdowns,” Berenson wrote Monday on Twitter. “But without comparing countries that DIDN’T lock down to those that did, they have no way of knowing if the decrease from the early rapid spread simple represents the natural and normal track of the virus.”