The Puzzling Royal Society Report on Covid-19

The Royal Society’s results exaggerated the efficacy of mandated lockdowns.A recent Royal Society report on the Covid-19 pandemic produced by a team led by Mark Walport, a professor of medicine at Imperial College London, captivated the press. The report concludes that non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), including mandatory lockdowns, “can provide powerful, effective and prolonged reductions in viral transmission.” In sharp contrast, our meta-analysis, Did Lockdowns Work? The Verdict on Covid Restrictions, found that NPIs “had a negligible effect on Covid-19 mortality” in early 2020. For example, we found that mandated restrictions reduced mortality by 6,000 to 32,000 deaths during the first Covid-19 wave in Europe. For context, 72,000 flu deaths occur during a typical flu season