There’s Still No Evidence that Either Lockdowns or Masks Are “Game Changers”

by Anthony Rozmajzl
Mises.org

Data visualization is a wonderful thing. It helps us understand important trends that would be invisible in raw data alone. Now more than ever, data analysts have been instrumental in providing data visualizations that rebut two of the most widely accepted, baseless slogans of the prolockdown, militant mask-wearing crowd: “Lockdowns save lives” and “Wear the damn mask.” The data tell a surprisingly clear story about the effectiveness of mask mandates and lockdowns in stopping the spread of covid-19: both are futile and the latter is deadly.

“Lockdowns Save Lives.”

Without any historical or scientific precedent indicating that lockdowns were even remotely effective at saving lives, governors single-handedly shut down their economies in an effort to quickly do something, anything to slow the spread. Questioning these orders on moral or utilitarian grounds quickly became “questioning the science,” an exceptionally strange slogan for its assumption that any evidence existed that vindicated the efficacy of lockdowns. But after only a few months of lockdown, it first became apparent that there was no correlation between how soon a region locked down and that region’s death toll:

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