Here’s What We Know About ‘Johns Hopkins Study’ on Lockdowns

In February 2022, a number of conservative news outlets reported on a working paper entitled “A Literature Review and Meta Analysis of the Effects of Lockdowns on COVID-19 Mortality” by a group of scholars at Johns Hopkins University. The paper claimed that the lockdowns implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic had little impact on preventing deaths. As this study appeared to run counter to previous reports that found lockdowns saved lives, we wanted to take a closer look at it.

Who is it from? What are the specific claims? What evidence are those claims based on?

The first thing we noticed when we examined the actual study, not the media reports covering the study, was that this was a “working paper” by a group of economists, not epidemiologists.