The Brownstone Institute for Social and Economic Research is a non-profit organisation founded in May 2021. Its vision is of a society that places the highest value on the voluntary interaction of individuals and groups while minimising the use of violence and force including that which is exercised by public authority. The motive force of Brownstone Institute is the global crisis created by policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020.
“The great body of evidence (comparative research studies and high-quality pieces of evidence and reporting judged to be relevant to this analysis) shows that Covid-19 lockdowns, shelter-in-place policies, masks, school closures, and mask mandates have failed in their purpose of curbing transmission or reducing deaths. These restrictive policies were ineffective and devastating failures, causing immense harm especially to the poorer and vulnerable within societies.,” the Brownstone Institute wrote.
“The benefits of the societal lockdowns and restrictions have been totally exaggerated and the harms to our societies and children have been severe: the harms to children, the undiagnosed illness that will result in excess mortality in years to come, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation in our young people, drug overdoses and suicides due to the lockdown policies, the crushing isolation due to the lockdowns, psychological harms, domestic and child abuse, sexual abuse of children, loss of jobs and businesses and the devastating impact, and the massive numbers of deaths resulting from the lockdowns that will impact heavily on women and minorities.”
Taking a close look at the real evidence, the Brownstone Institute says it plainly: the Covid pandemic has been steered by politics. It’s evidence of “monumental failure of lockdown policy.”
“It was clear very early on that task forces and medical advisers and decision-makers were not reading the evidence, were not up to speed with the science or data, did not understand the evidence, did not ‘get’ the evidence, and were blinded to the science, often driven by their own prejudices, biases, arrogance, and ego. They remain ensconced in sheer academic sloppiness and laziness. It was clear that the response was not a public health one. It was a political one from Day 1 and continues today.”
Brownstone then lists a compilation of 404 studies, reports and discussions as evidence that Covid lockdowns, use of face masks, school closures, and mask mandates were largely ineffective and caused crushing harms: lockdowns (162); school closures (75); masks ineffectiveness (97); mask mandates (9); and, mask harms (61).
