Johns Hopkins University researchers just confirmed what many of us having been saying for 18 months.

The lockdowns were a massive failure. https://t.co/Y9fN9JawpC

— Jon Miltimore (@miltimore79) February 2, 2022

FEE’s Brad Polumbo writes, “We’re into year three of the COVID-19 pandemic. From mask mandates to vaccine passports, government restrictions on our liberties remain in place. But, thankfully, at least in the US, the era of lockdown orders confining Americans’ to their homes to ‘slow the spread’ is over.

Unfortunately, a new meta-analysis of studies shows that all the pain and sacrifice we endured from those orders achieved little—despite their tremendous costs.”

Read the entire column.

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FEE’s Jon Miltimore writes, “As the world enters its third year of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, strategies to contain the virus continue to be explored, examined, and scrutinized. In some cases, clear answers remain stubbornly elusive.

New evidence out of the UK showed the research the government used to justify making masks mandatory in schools was “not conclusive.” https://t.co/b1YQK0OkJT

— FEE (@feeonline) January 13, 2022

New evidence out of the United Kingdom showed the research the government used to justify making masks mandatory in schools was ‘not conclusive.’

‘The government’s own study in the autumn did not provide proof of a statistically significant impact,’ the BBC reported last week.”

Read the entire column.

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FEE’s Brad Polumbo writes, “With President Biden’s federal vaccine mandate and local government employment mandates looming, the future of countless workers is up in the air. Yet new research undercuts the stated justification for these mandates.

The study does stress that vaccination has a clear personal health benefit, drastically reducing the chance of serious illness or death once infected with COVID-19.

But its interpersonal benefits are highly dubious, undercutting mandates. https://t.co/RwqORlRFe3

— Brad Polumbo ?? ?‍? (@brad_polumbo) November 1, 2021

Big-government politicians claim that vaccine mandates are necessary because unvaccinated individuals are a danger to not just themselves but society. They argue that choosing to remain unvaccinated exacerbates the spread of the deadly virus. But according to a new study published in the Lancet, this doesn’t appear to be true.

‘People inoculated against Covid-19 are just as likely to spread the delta variant of the virus to contacts in their household as those who haven’t had shots, according to new research,’ Bloomberg reports.”

Read the entire column.

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FEE’s Jon Miltimore writes, “A new study published in the The Southern Medical Journal (SMJ) found that a county-wide mask order in Bexar County, Texas, did not lead to a reduction in COVID-19 hospitalization rates or deaths.

The study, which was peer reviewed, analyzed data before and after mandates were imposed at both the state level (July 3, 2020) and in Bexar County (July 5, 2020), Texas’s fourth largest county.

“The planners pretend that their plans are scientific and that there cannot be disagreement with regard to them among well-intentioned and decent people,” Mises wrote in his 1947 essay “Planned Chaos.”https://t.co/v4XWbUYwP3

— Jon Miltimore (@miltimore79) September 9, 2021

‘We defined the control period as June 2 to July 2 and the postmask order period as July 8, 2020–August 12, 2020, with a 5-day gap to account for the median incubation period for cases; longer periods of 7 and 10 days were used for hospitalization and ICU admission/death, respectively,’ the study authors wrote. ‘Data were reported on a per-100,000 population basis using respective US Census Bureau–reported populations…’

‘All of the measured outcomes were higher on average in the postmask period as were covariables included in the adjusted model,’ the researchers said. ‘There was no reduction in per-population daily mortality, hospital bed, ICU bed, or ventilator occupancy of COVID-19-positive patients attributable to the implementation of a mask-wearing mandate.”

Read the entire column here.

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FEE’s Brad Polumbo writes, “Debate over the welfare state is once again making headlines. On Monday, the expanded unemployment welfare system was finally allowed to expire after more than a year. Originally created as a ‘short-term’ measure authorized for a few months in March 2020 then repeatedly extended, these benefits paid many of the unemployed more than their former jobs, with benefits reaching up to $25/hour in dozens of states.

Dozens of Republican-led states chose to end the benefits early. This week’s termination of enhanced benefits was in the Democrat-run states that maintained the expanded payouts, and with their lapse, the debate over whether these benefits were disincentivizing work was reignited.

New Study Vindicates States that Canceled Expanded Unemployment Welfare Early https://t.co/3ztjHH3Ey3 via @feeonline

— Brad Polumbo ?? ?‍? (@brad_polumbo) September 8, 2021

The Wall Street Journal even published a news article, widely circulated among welfare advocates, claiming that ‘states that cut off enhanced unemployment benefits early didn’t see a significant boost in job growth.’ This was a bizarre spin given that the article itself notes that ‘economists generally agree the enhanced benefits caused some people to stay out of the labor market’ and contains several pieces of evidence suggesting they did have a significant effect. But the skewed reporting is consistent with a broad pattern in media coverage and political commentary that has attempted to downplay and deny any drawbacks of the welfare expansion.”

Read the entire column here.

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