Thread by @DrJBhattacharya

The @who now claims it never supported lockdowns in 2020. Let's look at some receipts.

Feb 2020
The WHO Potemkin tour of China proclaims the Chinese lockdown "proven" to stop human "transmission chains", buying time for "vaccine development".


1/15 who.int/docs/default-s…

April 2020
As some parts of the world started to come out two weeks to slow the spread fever, the WHO recommends a set of stringent preconditions for lifting lockdown.
2/15

May 2020
The WHO issues a warning to countries to keep lockdowns in place until the epidemic is "under control". Under this faulty guidance, the world should probably still be in lockdown.
3/15

May 2020
According to the WHO, lockdowns are not decisions made by governments, but something that happens to people unless they obey.
4/15

May 2020
The WHO hails lockdowns as a "glimpse of what our world could look like" if the world took "bold steps" to curb climate change.
5/15

July 2020
The WHO reiterates its support for lockdowns as a way to "reduce" covid transmission, but in an awkwardly worded statement, implies that contact tracing is needed to "completely stop it".
6/15

Aside on contact tracing.
For an airborne virus like SARS-CoV-2, there was never any chance it would stop disease spread. In Sept. 2020, I published a piece with Mikko Packalen documenting its futility.
7/15
inference-review.com/article/on-the…

Earlier, in March 2020, a WHO official recommended "removing and isolating" covid infected family members from their homes.
8/15

To its credit, the WHO allowed Dutch researchers to post a preprint on its servers documenting that contact tracing had little to no impact on covid spread.
9/15

Oct 2020
As covid prevalence rose in the fall, the Great Barrington Declaration strongly recommends against lockdowns. The WHO goes into crisis mode to message lockdowns as a viable option for governments.
10/15

Oct 2020
A WHO epidemiologist lauds lockdowns as a way to "stop" covid outbreaks.
11/15

Oct 2020
The WHO changes its definition of herd immunity to exclude recovered immunity after infection, violating its obligation to convey scientific reality.
12/15

Feb 2022
In response to the omicron variant, the WHO finally gives up on lockdowns, but pushes for other "tools" like contact tracing (in addition to vaccines) to stop covid spread.
13/15

Postscript #1:
A 2024 comprehensive meta-analysis of the econometric literature on the effectiveness of lockdowns to stop disease spread by Danish, Swedish and American authors find little evidence of lockdown efficacy.
14/15
link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Postscript #2
Sweden, which never locked down, protected human life better than nearly every country on earth. I suppose one way to look at the WHO's current lies about its lockdown support is that now, no one will defend the lockdowns anymore.
15/15