Fox News host Tucker Carlson railed against the lockdowns in most US states aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus.

In a compelling presentation Wednesday night, Carlson questioned the "science" behind the decision to shut down much of the country, which has resulted extreme economic hardship as more than 26.3 million workers have filed for unemployment claims as of last week.

"What country is this?" asked Carlson. "It’s a country in a lockdown. We’re told we have no choice but to do this — to stop our lives completely."

"Mass quarantines, they tell us again and again, are the only way to save lives," Carlson added. "But that’s a lie. They don’t know it’s true, despite what they’ve claimed. There’s no scientific record to consult. It’s never been done . We’re currently living through the largest and most expensive experiment ever conducted in human history. We’ve spent trillions of dollars, and crushed millions of people, purely on the guess that a nationwide lockdown would save us from the coronavirus. Has it worked? Was the guess correct?"

Carlson then noted that the eight US states which haven't issued shelter-in-place orders are "below the national average of coronavirus cases, and deaths, per capita" - quoting Professor Wilfred Reilly of Kentucky State University, who found that "a state’s lockdown strategy had virtually no effect on how severe its outbreak of the Wuhan coronavirus was."

“Are you surprised by this?” Carlson asked. “Maybe you shouldn’t be. You can see the same trend at work in other countries. Sweden, most famously, has never locked down. Restaurants there have never closed. That country is still suffering from coronavirus, suffering more in fact than we are in the U.S. But the country’s epidemic appears to have peaked. And without locking down, Sweden has, and this is the key, has fared far better than other European countries that did lock down. That includes Britain, Italy, Spain and Belgium.” -Daily Caller

Perhaps most damning is new studies which suggest that far more people may have already had coronavirus.

"Up to 320,000 adults in Los Angeles apparently had already had it," said Calrson, citing the world of USC researchers who found that as of early April, upwards of 5.6% of the entire county had possibly contracted the coronavirus.

"At the time, the official number of infected people was about 8,000 people. City officials had no clue. They weren’t even close. The virus had spread throughout a huge population right in the middle of the most restrictive quarantine in American history. What does that tell you? It tells you the lockdown didn’t work."

According to Carlson, officials in lockdown states are "by and large ignoring any evidence that indicts their policies, or that might threaten their new and much-loved power."

"They don’t want to know what the facts are," he said. "Indeed, some are now promising even longer lockdowns, maybe through the end of the summer, and even tougher punishments for those who flout them."

"This is insanity," Carlson concluded. "It is definitely not science. This is not science. It has nothing to do with the public’s health, much less the broader public interest. This is instead what happens when mediocre people suddenly find themselves with God-like power: deciding who can go outside, when people can get married, which medical procedures you’re allowed to have. That’s a feeling of omnipotence, and they like that feeling. It fills an empty place inside. They don’t want to give it up. They want it to last forever, even as the country dies. But it can’t last forever. Because it’s not their country. It’s ours."

Carlson then interviewed Dr. John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University who authored a report which found that roughly 1.5% of 3,300 volunteers tested for COVID-19 antibodies were positive, and extrapolated (after adjusting for differences between the sample and the population of the county as a whole) that an between 2.5% and 4% of Santa Clara County residents have antibodies - suggesting that 48,000 - 81,000 people had already been infected in the county by early April.

Commenting on the effectiveness of the lockdowns, Ioannidis suggested that we need to wait until the virus waves are "mature," because "we can have some surprises."

"The science is telling us that this is a common infection. Most people probably don't recognize that they're infected, they're asymptomatic. At the same time it can be a devastating infection, it can kill lots of people" said Ioannidis.