The guidance from the World Health Organization on non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) was published last October based on the “latest scientific literature." Border screenings and closures, internal travel restrictions, quarantine of exposed individuals and contact tracing were explicitly “not recommended in any circumstances.”
Last month, a study of 50 countries in the top medical journal Lancet confirmed most of this. COVID-19 mortality correlates more with obesity rates than lockdowns, while movement restrictions and border closures lowered cases without saving lives. Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging diseases unit, advises against reimposing national lockdowns owing to health, social and economic downsides. Is this an implicit admission lockdowns were wrong in the first place?
The pandemic was initially declared with little existing science based knowledge of its emergence, growth, curve and retreat. Panicked governments imposed hard lockdowns in a cascading rush, forcing people to live virtually in a state of terror. By definition a pandemic is an international problem yet countries have responded with border closures “to protect my country” or, even more absurdly, “my state.” After examining weekly mortality rates from 24 European countries in the first halves of 2017-2020, Christian Bjornskov found no clear association between lockdown policies and mortality development.