The claim: A ‘Johns Hopkins study’ found lockdowns were not effective in preventing COVID-19 deaths
Those opposed to pandemic restrictions are promoting a working paper from economists as evidence that COVID-19 lockdowns were not effective in preventing deaths, a narrative that has been popular since the early days of the pandemic.
“According to Johns Hopkins, the lockdowns didn’t help at all,” reads a Feb. 2 Facebook post from filmmaker Ami Horowitz. “Not shocking.”
The post accumulated more than 1,700 interactions in a week. Similar versions of the claim made their way to Twitter, Instagram and Reddit.
Users who shared the posts described the report as a “Johns Hopkins study,” referencing the university known for its medical research and COVID-19 data.
But this paper is not nearly as authoritative as many discussing it purport, as it was not peer-reviewed and doesn’t represent an expert consensus on the subject of lockdowns.
Many public health experts have criticized the methodology and conclusions of the paper, which was conducted by economists rather than researchers with more extensive training in the complex dynamics at play in a pandemic. Other peer-reviewed papers have concluded lockdowns are an effective pandemic countermeasure.
It’s also inaccurate to attribute the report to Johns Hopkins, which did not endorse the paper.
USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the post for comment.
Paper not peer-reviewed or endorsed by Johns Hopkins
The report being cited online is a working paper authored by economists – not public health experts or epidemiologists, many of whom have criticized the paper’s conclusion.
“The paper underscores the need for peer review, which hopefully filters out the fluff from the methodologically sound science,” Mark Lurie, an associate professor of epidemiology at Brown University, said via email. “Not only is the paper itself not peer-reviewed, but it is itself a review of other papers, many of which were not peer-reviewed.”
The paper, titled, “A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality, was published in January. It appears on the website for the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health and the Study of Business Enterprise at Johns Hopkins.
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The paper was authored by three economists – including Johns Hopkins professor Steven H. Hanke, who has previously shared misinformation about COVID-19.
The authors analyzed 34 studies on the effects of lockdowns. Most of them looked at COVID-19 data prior to September 2020, and 12 of the studies are working papers.
Based on that analysis, the paper authors concluded pandemic-related lockdowns in Europe and the U.S. only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average.
“While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted,” the authors wrote in the paper’s abstract. “In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”
But public health and medical experts, including those at Johns Hopkins, have pushed back on those findings.
“The working paper is not a peer-reviewed scientific study,” Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in an email. “To reach their conclusion that ‘lockdowns’ had a small effect on mortality, the authors redefined the term ‘lockdown’ and disregarded many peer-reviewed studies.”
Hanke, the study’s lead author, told USA TODAY in an email that he and his co-authors excluded some studies relying on simulations because the meta-analysis “focused on real-world empirical evidence.” He said they did not exclude studies “based on their discipline.”
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When asked about the paper, Johns Hopkins spokesperson Jill Rosen pointed to the university’s principles on academic freedom and emphasized the first paragraph of the working paper.
“The views expressed in each working paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the institution that the authors are affiliated with,” it reads.
USA TODAY reached out to the working paper’s other two co-authors, Lars Jonung of Lund University and Jonas Herby of the Center for Political Studies in Denmark, for comment.
Experts criticize paper as ‘fundamentally flawed’
Following the paper’s publication, a number of public health experts issued statements criticizing the authors’ methodology and their broad definition of a lockdown. The authors have also faced criticism for ignoring facts on disease transmission and leaving out new data.
“I find this paper has flaws and needs to be interpreted very carefully,” Samir Bhatt, a professor of statistics and public health at Imperial College London, said in a statement published by the nonprofit Science Media Centre. “Two years in, it seems still to focus on the first wave of SARS-CoV-2 and in a very limited number of countries.”
The authors of the paper define a lockdown as “the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention.” Hanke said that definition “allows us to capture the full distribution of the severities and stringencies of lockdowns.”
However, Bhatt noted in his statement that such a definition would include mask-wearing policies, which are different from lockdowns.
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Medical experts have also said the paper’s authors failed to account for the lag between COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations and death.
Lurie, the Brown University epidemiologist, said the paper’s conclusion that lockdowns don’t work because there wasn’t an immediate decrease in deaths following lockdowns represents a “fundamental misunderstanding of the natural history of COVID-19.”
“We have known for a long time that lockdowns, even if effective, would not result in the immediate decrease in deaths but instead deaths would follow – lag – infections by at least several weeks,” Lurie said. “Failure to account for this lag will lead to incorrect conclusions.”
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Hanke said the working paper addressed that lag by separating the studies it examined into two groups: those that found a lockdown-related effect sooner than 14 days and those that did not.
Still, experts say the working paper’s emphasis on the immediate effect of lockdowns on COVID-19 deaths, instead of transmission rates, is misleading. They noted it takes a long time for the disease to not only spread but advance in individual people to the point of causing death.
Seth Flaxman, associate professor in the Department of Computer of Science at the University of Oxford, said in a statement that it can take weeks to see the effect of lockdowns on COVID-19 deaths. Flaxman specializes in statistical disease modeling and was lead author on a peer-reviewed study on the impact of lockdowns in Europe.
“It’s as if we wanted to know whether smoking causes cancer and so we asked a bunch of new smokers: Did you have cancer the day before you started smoking? And what about the day after?” Flaxman said in his statement, published by the Science Media Centre. “If we did this, obviously we’d incorrectly conclude smoking is unrelated to cancer, but we’d be ignoring basic science.”
Research indicates lockdowns save lives
Social media users who shared the posts claimed the working paper is proof that lockdowns haven’t been effective against COVID-19. But experts say that, while it’s difficult to assess the effect of lockdowns, research indicates they can prevent COVID-19 deaths.
A peer-reviewed study on lockdowns published in the journal Nature in June 2020 found that lockdowns prevented 3.1 million deaths across 11 different European countries. Another study published in the British Medical Journal estimated that lockdowns and COVID-19 restrictions reduced annual mortality by 3%-6% simply by slowing the spread of influenza.
“While it is difficult to know what harms have been directly caused by lockdowns, what is clear is that government interventions have a strong impact on COVID-19 cases and deaths,” the authors of the study wrote.
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Lurie, from Brown University, also pointed to a November 2020 study in Nature Human Behavior that analyzed the effectiveness of COVID-19 interventions worldwide. The authors concluded “no one-size-fits-all solution exists,” but that a combination of non-pharmaceutical interventions tailored to a country and its age can be “maximally effective” in preventing the spread of the virus.
Reuters and Health Feedback have previously debunked claims that COVID-19 lockdowns do not save lives, while also noting that lockdowns have negative impacts on mental health and the economy.
As noted by The Conversation, researchers say it is difficult to definitively evaluate the effects of lockdowns, and conflicting views on the subject are based on scientific facts on deaths and transmission rates and relevant values that people weigh differently.
Our rating: Missing context
Based on our research, we rate MISSING CONTEXT the claim that a “Johns Hopkins study” found lockdowns were not effective in preventing COVID-19 deaths, because without additional context it may be misleading.
The report referenced in the posts is a working paper that was not peer-reviewed, and it was authored by three economists – one of whom is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Johns Hopkins has not endorsed the paper.
Public health and medical experts say the paper is flawed, in part due to its overly broad definition of “lockdown.” Experts have also criticized the working paper’s emphasis on the immediate effect of lockdowns on COVID-19 deaths instead of disease transmission. Other peer-reviewed studies have found lockdowns prevent deaths.
Our fact-check sources:
- MedPage Today, Feb. 7, What You Need to Know About That ‘Johns Hopkins’ Lockdown Study
- PolitiFact, Feb. 7, What to know about the study on lockdowns and COVID-19 deaths by economists
- Jill Rosen, Feb. 9, Email exchange with USA TODAY
- Robin Scullin, Feb. 9, Email exchange with USA TODAY
- Mark Lurie, Feb. 10, Email exchange with USA TODAY
- Studies in Applied Economics, January 2022, A literature review and meta-analysis of the effects of lockdowns on COVID-19 mortality
- British Medical Journal, Oct. 23, 2012, What is meta-analysis?
- Forbes, Feb. 6, Did So-Called ‘Johns Hopkins Study’ Really Show Lockdowns Were Ineffective Against Covid-19?
- Johns Hopkins University, accessed Feb. 11, Academic Freedom at Johns Hopkins
- USA TODAY, April 24, 2021, Fact check: Study falsely claiming face masks are harmful, ineffective is not linked to Stanford
- Nature, March 22, 2020, The effect of large-scale anti-contagion policies on the COVID-19 pandemic
- Science Media Centre, Feb. 3, Expert reaction to a preprint looking at the impact of lockdowns, as posted on the Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences website
- World Health Organization, Dec. 31, 2020, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Herd immunity, lockdowns and COVID-19
- European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Jan. 27, Data on country response measures to COVID-19
- Journal of Public Health Research, March 9, 2021, The lag between daily reported Covid-19 cases and deaths and its relationship to age
- Nature, June 8, 2020, Estimating the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in Europe
- Nature Human Behaviour, Nov. 16, 2020, Ranking the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 government interventions
- Reuters, Nov. 24, 2020, Fact check: Studies show COVID-19 lockdowns have saved lives
- Health Feedback, May 10, 2021, Evidence shows that lockdowns implemented to tackle the spread of COVID-19 have saved lives, contrary to claims in the New York Post
- Steven H. Hanke, Feb. 11, Email exchange with USA TODAY
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