Nobel Prize-winning scientist explains why COVID lockdowns may have cost more lives than they saved

Stanford School of Medicine Professor Michael Levitt, who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, says the strict lockdown measures imposed to combat the coronavirus pandemic may have cost more lives than they saved.

"I think lockdown saved no lives," Levitt said on Saturday, The Telegraph reported.

"I think it may have cost lives. It will have saved a few road accident lives, things like that, but social damage — domestic abuse, divorces, alcoholism — has been extreme. And then you have those who were not treated for other conditions," he explained.

Levitt correctly predicted the scale of the pandemic, which most models, such as the widely publicized model from Imperial College, grossly overestimated. Those overestimations resulted in unnecessary "panic," Levitt said.

"I think that the real virus was the panic virus," Levitt said. "For reasons that were not clear to me, I think the leaders panicked and the people panicked and I think there was a huge lack of discussion."

Instead of mass lockdowns, which have been ongoing for several months across most of the globe, Levitt has advocated for developing "herd immunity."

In a separate interview earlier this month, Levitt explained:

I think the policy of herd immunity is the right policy. I think Britain was on exactly the right track before they were fed wrong numbers. And they made a huge mistake. I see the standout winners as Germany and Sweden. They didn't practise too much lockdown and they got enough people sick to get some herd immunity.

I see the standout losers as countries like Austria, Australia and Israel that had very strict lockdown but didn't have many cases.They have damaged their economies, caused massive social damage, damaged the educational year of their children, but not obtained any herd immunity.

There is no doubt in my mind, that when we come to look back on this, the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor.

Unfortunately, Levitt's observations are already proving true.

As TheBlaze reported last week, California doctors said they've seen more deaths from suicide than coronavirus during the mandatory lockdowns. It's a harsh reminder of what happens when the government compels people to remain at home.