inb4 zerohedge lol without noting the study is from Stanford (and once we find out about the author of that study we'll get right on to slandering him immediately and calling for his resignation - the Party does not tolerate dissent!!) COVID Lockdown Policies Will Disproportionately Hit Black Americans For Decades, New Study Finds "Follow the science" exclaimed every virtue-signaling talking head as left-leaning authorities/officials clamped down on Americans' rights nationwide... "wear a mask", "shelter at home", "no comingling", "slow the spread", "think of the children", "save grandma" were the cries as the virus refused to pay attention to state and local authories' orders to behave as the "scientist" textbooks claimed. And, as cases rose, and hospitalizations rose, and deaths rose, so did the tyrannical trouncing of the economy sending unemployment rates to record highs and crushing GDP growth to record lows. Now, here we sit, hunkered down in many blue states still, unable to discern exactly what 'science' it is that is driving officials' decision. Along those lines, it seems like a good idea to point out that a new peer reviewed study out of Stanford is questioning the effectiveness of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders (which it calls NPIs, or non-pharmaceutical interventions) to combat Covid-19. The study's lead author is an associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Stanford. "The study did not find evidence to support that NPIs were effective in preventing the spread," according to Outkick, who published the report. The study, co-authored by Dr. Eran Bendavid, Professor John P.A. Ioannidis, Christopher Oh, and Jay Bhattacharya, studied the effects of NPIs in 10 different countries, including England, France, Germany and Italy. And, when all was said and done, it concluded that: “In summary, we fail to find strong evidence supporting a role for more restrictive NPIs in the control of COVID in early 2020." In fact, the study found “no clear, significant beneficial effect of more restrictive NPIs on case growth in any country.” So, did left-leaning states' policies in response to the pandemic - to lockdown entire states, crush economies, and spark mass unemployment and poverty leading to increasing deaths of despair actually achieve anything? Nope. The longer answer is yes... they made the situation for African Americans considerably worse for at least the next two decades. A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that, for the overall population, the increase in the death rate following the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown policies implies a staggering 0.89 and 1.37 million excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively. These numbers correspond to 0.24% and 0.37% of the projected US population at the 15- and 20-year horizons, respectively. However, for African-Americans, we estimate 180 thousand and 270 thousand excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively. These numbers correspond to 0.34% and 0.49% of the projected African-American population at the 15- and 20-year horizons, respectively. For Whites, we estimate 0.82 and 1.21 million excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively. These numbers correspond to 0.30% and 0.44% of the projected White population at the 15- and 20-year horizons, respectively. These numbers are roughly equally split between men and women. African-Americans experience larger unemployment shocks and the effects of these shocks on unemployment are more persistent. Conditional on the same race, the shocks for women are smaller. The effects on life expectancy and death rates are more severe for African-Americans, overall. Alas, the time to fix this is gone as Deutsche Bank's Jim Reid previously noted, the die has already been cast and it is now far too late.
As noted by many others.... this paper is just another pile of nonsense from anti-lockdown advocates Jay Bhattacharya and John Ioannidis -- whose names are at the top of the paper as the primary authors. This paper should be treated with the same disdain that the entire academic community treats the political propaganda being put out by these two. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13484
Is that where we are? It's no longer the DemoCraps, but rather "The Party"? (The ONE Party... One-Party Government? Isn't there a name for that?) They are behaving like it's thus... too much like the CCP!
LOL! I already get that all the time on ET! Kind of like the Borg. "You will be assimilated... resistance is futile".
This study cites South Korea as having less restrictive NPIs but I wonder if Americans would ok with their government tracking their cell phones to contact trace. Also cites Japan where mask compliance is near universal. I don’t disagree with the study though, if we could get a good 6 weeks of universal mask usage, we could have a much more open economy that has way less restrictions.
Yeah but the premise of the paper is actually a pretty simple call for more basic compliance to things like mask wearing and contact tracing aka “less restrictive” NPIs.
So they can predict who will die in the next 20 years? it is said what a person can do with statistics and actually call it peer reviewed (peers are just biased humans who agree to publish a paper.....Newspaper articles are peer reviewed too). Anyone with a degree in econometrics, such as myself, finds such studies (I am not talking about the shutdown issue politically) are riddled with statistical guesses extrapolated out on faulty data. Extrapolation of death rates is based not on any actual facts because apart from actuarial tables, you cannot forecast out changes in life expectancy and death rates. You can guess....but you would be wrong. Put the politics aside, the study is based on statistics and economics, two fields of study based on theory and guesses. Also the conclusion is slanted since WHite Males have a higher death rate and the author said "Overall" it affects AA more. Also the study makes no breakdown of each group into economic factors of wealth or low, middle, upper class. Unemploment affects lower class families the hardest but has 0 correlation to death rates over an extended period of time. Once you study econometrics, you never see these kind of papers in the same way.