Login
One month of the COVID-19 lockdown cut up to two years off the life expectancy of heart attack patients, a new study concluded.
The study, published this month in the European Heart Journal — Quality of Care & Clinical Outcomes, showed that many people who had heart attacks during the first month of the COVID-19 lockdown “didn’t call it in because they were told there’s more important things happening,” political commentator and comedian Russell Brand told viewers in a recent episode of “Stay Free.”
The international team of researchers analyzed data from the U.K. and Spain. They used statistical modeling to determine that the lack of medical care provided to heart attack patients likely reduced the life expectancy of those patients by an average of 18 months in the U.K. and two years in Spain when compared with pre-lockdown patients.
“If people suffering from genuine life-threatening illnesses were not getting the care they needed, what was the point of lockdown?” Brand asked.
Meanwhile, Brand said, the authors — including Steve Hanke, Ph.D., professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University — of a systematic review and meta-analysis report examined nearly 20,000 studies on measures taken across the world to protect populations against COVID-19 and concluded that lockdowns were a “costly failure.”
“The science of lockdowns is clear; the data are in: the deaths saved were a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering collateral costs imposed,” Hanke and his co-authors said, adding:
“Stringency index studies find that the average lockdown in Europe and the United States in the spring of 2020 only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 3.2 percent.
“This translates into approximately 6,000 avoided deaths in Europe and 4,000 in the United States.”
The detrimental impact of lockdown measures on children’s health and education, and on countries’ economies has become increasingly clear since the policy was introduced, they added.
The U.K.’s Institute of Economic Affairs published the authors’ findings on June 5.
“Some deaths appear to be more important than others, more expedient, more profitable, more beneficial to state and corporate power,” Brand said. “That’s at least how it seems to me.”
Brand pointed out that during the COVID-19 pandemic, people who criticized the lockdown measures were told “Don’t be so selfish.” Often, they were censored.
Now that research suggests individuals were right to question the efficacy of the lockdowns, the message from mainstream media has been, “It’s time for an amnesty. It’s time to forget about [all that],” he said, adding:
“Oh, I see, it’s almost like you just say what’s convenient to you when it’s convenient, that you’ve got no morals, no principles, no vision, no idea how to change the world.
“So it’s probably time to start listening to the rest of us who have some fantastic ideas about how things could change.”
But rather than listening to citizens, The Telegraph recently reported that a secretive U.K. government unit worked with social media companies to shut down discussions of controversial lockdown policies during the pandemic, Brand pointed out.
The BBC took part in secretive government policy forum meetings to address the “so-called disinformation.”
Brand noted the “Twitter Files” have revealed collusion between the U.S. government and social media companies. “It’s almost as if the world’s most powerful governments are all using the same playbook,” he said.
“Wait,” he added, “what if voices that are conveying truthful information are being censored and shut down? Wait, what if the truth is a complex thing that requires nuance and conversation?”
Watch here:
