Fox News segments on Wednesday repeatedly conflated a new study that questions the effectiveness of pandemic lockdowns with the controversies over vaccines and mask mandates, essentially to claim that all public health measures are ineffective. Yet many scientists across the globe have rushed to speak out against the paper, pointing out its flaws — something that Fox News did not address in its constant coverage of the study.
The network repeatedly highlighted a non-peer-reviewed study published online by a group of economists at Johns Hopkins University that claimed lockdowns had little effect in reducing COVID deaths. Fox News then trotted out various conservative pundits with no expertise in public health who equated lockdowns — a blunt instrument largely intended to prevent hospitals from being overrun in the early days of the pandemic — with public health measures that have been shown to work at reducing transmission and preventing severe disease and death.
