FIRST INTERIM REPORT OF THE TWENTY-SECOND STATEWIDE GRAND JURY

CONCLUSION
This brings us back to our original question: How did these nonpharmaceutical interventions affect the overall risk presented by the SARS-CoV-2 virus?

With respect to lockdowns, there does exist a pattern in the data showing a short-term stabilization of case growth that persists until the lockdown is lifted, followed by months or even years of excess mortality that can partially be attributed to collateral consequences concentrated in the groups at lowest risk from COVID-19 disease. There is a case to be made that these lockdowns enabled others in high-risk groups to “bridge the gap” until 2021 when they had access to vaccines—a subject which this Grand Jury will undoubtedly examine in future presentments. On average, however, when one includes all age groups, lockdowns were not a good trade

Comparative data showed that jurisdictions that held to them tended to end up with higher overall excess mortality. This is especially evident when compared to jurisdictions that targeted their protective efforts towards the highest-risk groups instead of mandating large-scale, extended periods of quarantine for everyone. Effectively, lockdowns traded the immediate welfare of a smaller, affluent, well-represented group of older Americans who could afford to stay home for the longer-term welfare of a larger, less-affluent, poorly-represented group of children, teens, twenty-, thirty- and forty-somethings who could not. If anything, the result of this was a modest benefit to the former group at the expense of the latter.

With respect to masks, we have never had sound evidence of their effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the form of reliable RCTs that demonstrated statistically significant benefits. There have always been legitimate questions around the impracticality of individual adherence to mask recommendations, but once it became clear that the primary transmission vector of SARS-CoV-2 was via aerosol, their potential efficacy was further diminished. Public health agencies failed to adequately explain this important distinction to the American public in favor of a broad mask recommendation that did not makenearly enough distinction between the types of masks available and put at risk those it sought to help.

Well-financed federal agencies chose to fill the discourse with flawed observational and laboratory studies, hiding behind their conclusion of “no equipoise” to avoid the potential embarrassment of the public health advice they championed being invalidated by evidence Likewise, the aerosol-based spread of SARS-CoV-2 changes the equation with respect to social distancing. It is not nearly as important how far away people are from one another as it is whether they are in an interior or exterior environment and whether that environment is subject to adequate airflow. Even today, this important information is missing from the CDC’s Social Distancing Guidelines As for their effect on overall SARS-CoV-2 risk, we cannot ignore the fact that these NPIs were not administered based on the best available scientific data.

In fact, many public health recommendations and their attendant mandates departed significantly from scientific research that was contemporaneously available to everyone: Individuals, scientists, corporations and governments alike. Often this research was ignored by institutional policymakers. Occasionally it was even attacked. It is a sad state of affairs when something as simple as following the science
constitutes an act of heresy, but here we are. Importantly, while some of these NPIs may have shifted risk to later in time or from one group to another or had some speculative efficacy against viral spread when used in perfect laboratory conditions, comparative evidence suggests they did not significantly change the overall risk profile presented by the SARS-CoV-2 virus in terms of excess death, especially once collateral consequences are taken into consideration.

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