In the Wake of “Covid Panic” and the “Lockdowns”: The Death and Resurrection of Science

by Prof. Peter C. Gatzsche from The Brownstone Institute

After two years of draconian lockdowns, governments around the world suddenly dismantled their unprecedented campaigns against Covid-19 in silence. From one day to another, the whole thing was supposed to be forgotten. 

Looking back, it seems appropriate to abbreviate the Covid-19 pandemic as the Covid-19 panic, or to call it the pandemic of censorship and poor science.

Science and free speech were among the earliest victims of Covid-19. Millions of papers came out, most of them of very poor quality, and authorities quickly forgot that they are obliged to base their decisions on the most reliable science. Torturing your data till they confess became acceptable. And if randomised trials did not confess to what the authorities wanted, they ignored them and based their decisions on flawed observational studies instead. 

The lockdowns went counter to what we knew about respiratory viruses, that it is impossible to lock them out, and they caused a lot of collateral damage, including an increase in deaths from other causes than Covid-19. 

Sweden did not lock down and did not mandate face masks, and it seems to be the only country where the politicians had the best possible advisors and respected their advice. Sweden ended up having one of the lowest excess mortalities in the Western world. This should ring alarm bells everywhere, but what we have seen so far are pathetic defenses of grossly failed policies...

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