Peer-reviewed study suggests that lockdowns have little effect on Covid spread
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
>Implementing any NPIs [Non Pharmaceutical Interventions eg lockdown] was associated with significant reductions in case growth in 9 out of 10 study countries
There ARE very mixed results from the More Restrictive NPIs ("mrNPI"s).
I suspect that's because places like the UK (where I am) have pretended to implimented mrNPIs while actually encouraging people to go back to BAU. We're under super double extra serious lockdown here. In practise that means everything is the same as it was in any of the lockdown but some schools are closed for some pupils.
I went out and bought jewellery today (an essential good apparently). After that, I went to the supermarket where even the staff had no masks on.
But our numbers will be pooled with countries where lockdown means more than pubs only doing takeaway...
Let's not forget that these mrNPIs have side effects - over 200 million people globally have been thrown into extreme poverty by them, increased deaths of despair, decimation of small business and resulting wealth concentration, etc.
There is a segment of society which believes that obviously mrNPIs are in everyone's best interest, but given that the side effects are well documented and very negative I think the burden of proof should be on the pro lockdown camp to explain why mrNPIs are the best policy intervention. The WHO recommends them only in extreme circumstances. They aren't popular with the public. Surely it's reasonable to consider alternatives (such as improving adherence to WHO recommendations) instead of invoking the alt right bogeyman and shutting down discussion as some are so quick to do.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/6/5/18518005/prohibit...
Choosing not to do something is not the same as not being able to do it.
If our "leaders" mastered have the effort for this that we put into the war on drugs or tax cuts for the Uber rich or even farm subsidies, we'd all be in the pub by now.
Edit:
I think issues like this are difficult exactly because we cannot have a compromise solution. A compromise solution (lots of lockdown but not effective lockdown) is worst for everyone.
The WHO has been clear in their recommendation since the beginning. Building effective test/trace/isolate capacity is how you control the spread of Covid. Is there a limited and brief role for lockdowns, business closures, forced stay at home etc., yes in extreme circumstances. Long term no.
I am just paraphrasing the WHO here, and of course anyone is free to disagree with them, but they're hardly known as a paragon of right wing populism.
https://mobile.twitter.com/who/status/1316020010540625920?la...
They have been putting out publications which say this since, if memory serves, March (or maybe even earlier).
When a case occurs they close for a bit. But they're open 90% of the time. That a lot more of the time than uk pubs are managing.
I'd accept a working test and trace program too. Like Singapore used.
Don't think me greedy but... We could even do both, as we have more resources than Aus and Singapore combined and we've had a lot more time to do all this.
Once again, I have to ask: why hasn't my government managed such a thing? Could it be that it's impossible (despite Singapore having done it) or are they just too complacent?
Instead were stuck with the shitty parts of a long lockdown (closed pubs) without achieving the desired outcomes (single digit daily death rates).
Those countries got to party together for new year's because they were both at zero cases.
Yet Australia has made a huge success of it. By doing the things we merely talked about. By enforcing basic requirements like masks where we somehow (STILL) can't.
It's very frustrating watching him on the beach while I can't even get a pint...
/rant.
This is probably explainable by correlations between political leanings and population density, but that's beside the point: Is there real evidence for the claim you are making, or does it just fit in conveniently with your worldview and narrative?
The US does particularly badly with the more restrictive measures, and has a large segment of the population that denies covid is real and/or anything to worry about. Connecting those dots isn't THAT much of a leap, in the context of an internet forum...
I don't think he's trying to point out a cold hard fact as much as a trend.
Australia has a right wing popularist government but has coped well. Urban areas would always be worst hit, it's a communicable disease.
So there will never be a cold hard law to this.
I find the dishonesty the most annoying. My current right wing popularise government lacks the bravery to be honest and say "fuck it". So they're pretending to do things. Then immediately breaking the rules themselves very publically.
People get the message: "this is serious, wink wink, nudge nudge"
So I would be pretty sceptical about this unless a wide range of experts find this has merit. "Peer-reviewed" does not mean much if it's some third-tier journal or the "peers" were biased.
And in Austria the number of intensive care beds given over to covid 19 was over 90% in some counties and after the latest lockdowns this dropped significantly.
ive certainly noticed in austin that while many people are taking more precautions the actual rules are mostly ignored.
The article actually says a lot the measures work, the results for the most restrictive measures is "mixed". I suspect that is as you say: some places actually follow those rules and they work, other places ignore them and they (unsurprisingly) fail.
Edit, case in point, teachers have had enough of constant U-turns and cancelled and reactivated and re cancelled initiatives:
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-poll-suggests-most-teach...
In my country we hit 40% positive tests in november with hospitals full and people dying without being hospitalized which necessitated closing of schools, restaurants and malls, and the numbers six weeks later are down to single digit percentages. Good enough for me.
In none of the 8 countries and in none out of the 16 comparisons (against Sweden or South Korea) were the effects of mrNPIs significantly negative (beneficial). The point estimates were positive (point in the direction of mrNPIs resulting in increased daily growth in cases) in 12 out of 16 comparisons (significantly positive in 3 of the 12, in Spain and in England compared with Sweden). The only country where the point estimates of the effects of mrNPIs were negative in both comparisons was Iran (-0.07 [95CI -0.21 - 0.07] compared with Sweden; -0.02 [95CI -0.28 - 0.25] compared with South Korea).
Certainly in the UK back in March/April a large number of deaths are likely attributable to sick older people being placed back into care homes from hospital to free up capacity
Unfortunately, US covid data is also really unreliable as the percentage of people diagnosed clearly isn’t constant over the course of the pandemic. Most obviously dips in daily infections and deaths over Thanksgiving and Christmas are clearly artifacts in data collection.
Looking at for example the weekly all-cause deaths in the U.S. shows large spikes corresponding to the 3 waves, but those peaks don’t map to the reported daily COVID deaths. Similarly the rates of COVID hospitalization and deaths don’t map between the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd wave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_the_COVID-19_pan...
PS: It’s easy to count the number of positive test results, much harder to accurately estimate total infections over time.
And looking at the data they used, this seems even more likely: they investigated only England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, and the US. Almost all of these countries are outliers - in England, the US, Sweden, Iran and the Netherlands, the government spent a long time advocating AGAINST any measures and claiming that they are not necessary, before doing some kind of abrupt turn. South Korea has the worst case spread out of all the east-asian countries, and it is known for the remarkable detail of its contact tracing and testing - probably the best in the world. The data from Iran is also very hard to trust. Germany has relied a lot on its hospitals and chose to implement rather lax lockdowns compared to many smaller countries. Italy, France and Spain are harder to question, but they were the worst hit countries (except Belgium maybe?) on the continental EU, so they may have special factors that I'm not thinking about.