There were studies showing that mandatory helmet laws coincide with reduced cycling, and more cycling coincides with fewer deaths

https://theconversation.com/ditching-bike-helmets-laws-bette... Has references to many papers

I’ve personally read it from the book Freakinomics, here is the article pointing to one scientific paper. But it could still be false, you are correct: From my experience, a scientific paper isn’t trustworthy until another paper comes and shows which limits it has.

https://freakonomics.com/2010/01/19/do-bike-helmet-laws-disc...

There was a TED talk about this, don't know about papers.

https://youtu.be/07o-TASvIxY

You don't need an urban myth when you already have statistics.

The observation from comparing different countries after the fact seems to be that the economy suffers from the epidemic itself (voluntary change of habits plus hospitalizations) as much it does from lockdowns, so the argument is that if you avoided lockdowns then you got both the increased deaths from covid and also the deaths because people lost jobs and are depressed.

The economic issues and the associated death increase was avoided only in countries which successfully managed to limit the spread of disease, which generally involved aggressive early lockdowns.

No doubt, but they also cause fewer deaths from reducing healthcare overload.