Remember All Those Government COVID Policies? Turns Out They Were Useless

It's easy to forget now, but for several years, global governments, including ours, imposed an enormous amount of authoritarian mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mask mandates, vaccine passports, lockdowns, business closures, capacity restrictions, curfews, closed schools, and in some countries, restrictions on free movement for its own citizens. These policies were championed by public health experts, enforced by the power of the state and enacted without any thought or concern for ancillary side effects. Though, of course, after years of harm and damage, even the most hardened, anti-science extremists like Dr. Anthony Fauci have had to admit mistakes.

READ: Fauci Finally Admits Closing Schools Was A Mistake

Turns out that, beyond the damage they caused, a new study has yet again confirmed that the government mandates also didn't achieve their primary objective: preventing the spread of COVID. 

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 25:  National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci arrives at an event commemorating the 50 millionth COVID-19 vaccine shot on February 25, 2021 at the South Court Auditorium of Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC.  (Photo by Doug Mills/Pool/Getty Images)

Government COVID Policies Were Completely Useless

A new study published in Science was released in June attempting to study the impact of a broad range of COVID policies, from an enormous variety of countries.

"Government responses to COVID-19 are among the most globally impactful events of the 21st century. The extent to which responses—such as school closures—were associated with changes in COVID-19 outcomes remains unsettled," the study reads.

Essentially, the researchers used a "Multiverse analysis" to "offer a systematic approach to testing a large range of models." That incorporated "daily data on 16 government responses in 181 countries in 2020–2021," when most policies were in effect.

They also examined four outcomes to determine whether those policies had been successful: "cases, infections, COVID-19 deaths, and all-cause excess deaths." That data was then incorporated into nearly 100,000 analytic models to attempt to find a comprehensive, conclusive answer to the all-important question: did what we do actually make any difference?

Spoiler alert: it sure didn't.

While some of the models suggested that these mandates were "helpful," the preponderance of results showed that there were no associations between policies and outcomes whatsoever.

"No subanalysis (e.g. limited to cases as outcome) demonstrated a preponderance of helpful or unhelpful associations," the researchers write. "Among the 14 associations with P values < 1 × 10−30, 5 were helpful and 9 unhelpful." Essentially, among the 14 models that demonstrated a connection between policies and outcomes where there was a potentially statistically significant association, nine said that government mandates were "unhelpful."

"In summary, we find no patterns in the overall set of models that suggests a clear relationship between COVID-19 government responses and outcomes," they conclude. And in the most simply, damning term for Fauci and his allies, they say their results show that "Strong claims about government responses’ impacts on COVID-19 may lack empirical support."

Mandates Caused Harm, Helped No One

Of the nearly 100,000 simulations run, 58% of the model returns came to the conclusion that individual policies and mandates had been "unhelpful" in reducing any of the studied outcomes, cases, COVID-related deaths or excess deaths. 

Importantly, there was also no difference between the helpful or unhelpful models in terms of statistical significance; both helpful and unhelpful results were significant or not-significant at similar rates. 

But even more damning for the pro-COVID mandate extremists is which policies were most consistently seen as not helpful in reducing negative outcomes. Basically every single one of the "interventions" experts championed as the Single Most Important thing we could do to combat the spread of the virus.

Among the "Most commonly unhelpful" to outcomes were:

• Access to testing
• School closures
• Masking policies
• Vaccine availability

And among the "most commonly unhelpful and significant" were:

• Government response index
• Stringency index
• Workplace closure

Simply, the policies most unlikely to help reduce COVID spread or deaths were testing, school closures, masks, vaccine availability, and strict government shutdowns.

It's quite literally a complete and thorough dismantling of the entire public health profession. Their preferred mandates, the policies that they forced the public to comply with, that they demonized critics over – all were completely useless. Beyond useless, they were likely unhelpful.

Masks, getting everyone access to COVID vaccines, strict workplace closures – quite literally the Fauci doctrine of pandemic response. Utterly ineffective. While, of course, causing immense harm both to individuals and irreparably, permanently damaging institutional trust. 

These findings should be national news; putting a final nail in the coffin of any discussion of future mandates or closures. Instead, because it contradicts progressive consensus, they'll be safely and conveniently ignored. You can't learn from mistakes if you never admit you made any.