Did a Johns Hopkins Study 'Prove' Lockdowns Don't Work? What We Know So Far

Aworking paper published on the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) website on January 31, has raised a question of the effectiveness of lockdowns as measures to reduce COVID mortality, fueling anti-lockdown narratives and speculative claims on social media and multiple news outlets.

The paper, which consists of a systematic literature review and meta analysis, was written by Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University and senior fellow and director of the Troubled Currencies Project at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. His co-authors were Jonas Herby, a special adviser at the Centre for Political Studies in Copenhagen, and Lars Jonung, a Lund University economist. Fortune magazine described the authors as "free marketers." It has yet to be peer-reviewed, and it has received criticism on several fronts from the scientific community.