by Ryan McMaken
Mises.org
Last week, Dr. David Nabarro from the World Health Organization admitted that lockdowns have been devastating for much of the world, noting that “Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.” Nabarro went on to list various examples of the economic damage done by lockdowns:
Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition.
Nabarro also reminded his audience that lockdowns won’t make covid-19 disappear, employing the lockdown rationale used in the early days of the covid-19 panic. In other words, lockdowns don’t make diseases go away:
The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.
These comments were followed this week by additional comments from Dr. Hans Kluge of the WHO, who stated lockdowns should only be a “very, very last resort” because of the effects on more vulnerable populations.