Covidiocy and Cancer

 by John Hinderaker

One of the worst aspects of the covid fiasco of 2020 was the shutting down of “nonessential” or “elective” medical care. Worldwide, many thousands of checkups, routine procedures and so on were foregone, with consequences that will unfold over the coming decades.

The World Health Organization has undertaken a study to find out how many cancer cases were “missed” during the covid epidemic, mostly because of shutdowns. The Telegraph relates the results:

Nearly a quarter of all new cancer cases may have been missed during the Covid pandemic, a World Health Organisation (WHO) study has found.

Researchers said lockdown restrictions and pressures on healthcare systems saw diagnoses of the disease drop by 23 per cent globally, suggesting it was not identified in around one million people.

A million cases of cancer that were not diagnosed in timely fashion, and in many cases remain undiagnosed today. WHO’s study was an analysis of “more than 240 different studies, providing the first comprehensive worldwide assessment of the impact of Covid on cancer care.” Here are the details:

The researchers found there had been a 23 per cent drop in the number of cancer diagnoses made after spring 2020, a 39 per cent decline in cancer screening, a 24 per cent drop in diagnostic procedures and a 28 per cent reduction in treatments.

The bottom line is a million cancer cases that were not timely identified. And this is a WHO study: if there is any group that is not anxious to reflect badly on governments’ covid decisions, it is WHO, which largely drove those decisions.

The Telegraph adds some data specific to Great Britain:

A previous study by the University of Oxford found there had been a “substantial impact” on cancer screening and diagnoses in the UK in 2020 and 2021 caused by the pandemic. It estimated that 18,000 breast, 13,000 colorectal, 10,000 lung, and 21,000 prostate cancer diagnoses were missed from March 2020 to December 2021.

The shutdowns that governments foolishly implemented as a result of the covid scare have had horrific consequences, and those consequences will continue to be felt for decades to come. Some of the negative fallout is quantifiable, like missed cancer diagnoses. Other consequences, like the impact on young people of missing a year or more of school, are harder to quantify but likely, in the long run, more devastating.

If there is a silver lining in this story, it lies in the fact that pretty much everyone now recognizes that the shutdowns, mask mandates and other voodoo medicine of the era of covid hysteria were worse than a mistake. They were particularly unforgivable, because they were contrary to many decades of public health experience, and contrary to the public health guidance that existed in various agencies as of 2020–guidance that was promptly overruled when covid hysteria took hold in certain quarters.

Happily, a new day has dawned. There is every prospect that federal policy, at least, will return to the conventional wisdom that grew out of centuries of public health experience. This return to normalcy is exemplified by Donald Trump’s nomination of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a leading voice of common sense, as Director of the National Institutes of Health, where he will be well positioned to lead resistance to whatever pseudo-science may spring up in response to the next global epidemic.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/01/covidiocy-and-cancer.php