Here is a random article: https://www.dailywire.com/news/johns-hopkins-study-lockdowns...
There is very little coverage in mainstream media, is it because the study is not influential?
> We have seen no studies which we believe credibly separate the effect of early lockdown from the effect of early voluntary behavior changes. Instead, the estimates in these studies capture the effects of lockdowns and voluntary behavior changes. As Herby (2021) illustrates, voluntary behavior changes are essential to a society’s response to an pandemic and can account for up to 90% of societies’ total response to the pandemic. Including these studies will greatly overestimate the effect of lockdowns, and, hence, we chose not to include studies focusing on timing of lockdowns in our review.
From my perspective, it would seem like "voluntary behavior changes" are a core element of lockdowns, so I am not seeing why they would wish to exclude that from their analysis (other than that it goes against their thesis?). Also, I think the Daily Wire article does a disservice to their readers by glossing over key caveats such as "voluntary behavior changes" effects on the pandemic.
Not having contact with others is obviously effective in avoiding covid and lowering hospital loads. The question is at what point hospitalization rates are low enough (from vaccinations and prior infections) that we can stop staying at home.
The reality is that most of the response policy has been driven by protecting infrastructure rather than directly trying to protect people. The goal of lockdowns as well as other preventive measures is to smooth the curve and keep hospitals, food production, child care, mass transit and goods transportation, etc from collapsing.
Once the estimate is that hospitals have a healthy margin of ICU space available with less restrictions, restrictions have often been immediately dropped.
Personally instigated restrictions, such as someone choosing to stay at home when here is no mandate, is much more nuanced.
From first principles, lock-down will obviously work when you isolate everyone in the society.
The less stringent the lock-down the less effect it will have.
The real question is not whether they work, but the tradeoffs.
Do we want totalitarian style lock-downs?
> The real question is not whether they work, but the tradeoffs.
Tradeoffs are hard. Also, objectives when balancing tradeoffs are subjective.
But you can suppress the virus for as long as you want if you are willing to accept the tradeoffs.
Edit: 1.1 Argentina 1.2 Australia 1.3 Austria 1.4 Bangladesh 1.5 Cambodia 1.6 Canada 1.8 Denmark 1.9 Fiji 1.10 France 1.11 Ghana 1.12 India 1.13 Indonesia 1.13.1 Large-scale social restrictions 1.13.2 Community Activities Restrictions Enforcement 1.14 Iran 1.15 Ireland 1.16 Italy 1.17 Malaysia 1.18 Myanmar 1.19 Namibia 1.20 Nepal 1.21 Netherlands 1.23 Nigeria 1.24 Pakistan 1.25 Philippines 1.26 Russia 1.27 Singapore 1.28 South Africa 1.29 Thailand 1.30 United Kingdom 1.31 United States 1.32 Vietnam
Israel reacted quickly and severely, forcing hard lockdowns. Sweden reacted slowly, late and with mild restrictions. The results, after adjustment to age, normal mortality rates and maybe removing outliers (Sweden failed to enforce restrictions on elderly care homes) are not that far in terms of mortality and it's too early to judge other effects.
The problem I see with the paper, and I haven't read it thoroughly, is that it doesn't suggest and check the alternatives. A policy of soft restrictions works well in a country with polite introverts that trust their government like Sweden but it might not work that well in Mediterranean countries where being physically close to others is the norm.
Anyway, it is good that there is academic research around it and that we may be better prepared for the next pandemy.
* Not peer-reviewed
* Not published in a journal (but self-published on a personal website)
* Questionable filtering excludes high-quality studies
* Questionable weighting boosts low-quality studies
It's not that lockdowns are ineffective, it's that half-arsed partial lockdowns ended before elimination are ineffective.
Before I hear the standard "but it's an island" argument: yes, Australia and New Zealand can shut down international travel with relative ease, but so can any sovereign nation. Even countries in Schengen have been managing their own border restrictions.
The usual followup argument is "but there's so much trade and cross-border travel, it's impractical to shut it down". There's a counter to that in Australia too: the quarantine of Melbourne from the rest of the state. Travel into and out of Melbourne required a permit while the city was in lockdown and the permit was only granted for a limited set of reasons, like work, delivering goods, or medical care. Imagine quarantining LA from the rest of California, or London from the rest of England. That's what Australia did.
I always feel that in developed countries with 'space' lockdown should be much more effective but unless you are living off grid it is entirely possible that you will definitely get infected.
A lack of lockdown or any attempts at controlling spread is also political suicide in many places.
https://twitter.com/lonnibesancon/status/1488409297860153345
..." The series in which this is published does not peer-review, and contains all of the last authors' work... ... that major papers are omitted in this "meta-analysis" "
So no peer-review,
written in a journal that has close ties to one of the authors
and omitted major papers that should have been included.
Are there many countries which have only had one wave of Covid?
May 2020, Anders Tegnell [Sweden’s state epidemiologist] said Covid was a virus "we're going to have to live with for a very long time"[0]
November 2021, he said "Now, we’re two years into this and Sweden doesn’t really stand out. We’re not the best, but we’re definitely not the worst. That’s what I hear now: how much good did all these draconian [measures] do for anybody?"[1]
[0] https://www.ft.com/content/a2b4c18c-a5e8-4edc-8047-ade4a82a5... [1] https://www.ft.com/content/0c07de5f-e852-4c23-823b-5f8f7d18e...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-europe...
Also, Portugal has higher death rates than Sweden. Same population. What can we take from this? Population density in stric geographical zones don't help at all in pandemics, and your country should have a good healthcare system ready to take these kind of pandemic situations. Also, let's see how useless those measures are when you start measuring the weight of the economic disaster that's coming up.
1. Waves peaked and went into decline at the wrong times for lockdowns to have been the cause.
2. There was no correlation between lockdown severity and outcomes.
It also became clear that having committed to such a disastrous and stupid policy, public health people couldn't then admit it had failed despite the clarity of the data, so they simply ignored it all, then told everyone it was a great success and we had to keep on doing it. The press fell into line and now, even two years later, we have the problem of people like yourself who assume that if we are doing it, it must therefore work. Oh, how easy life would be if that were so.
The reality is lockdowns are still sporadically happening and they're slow to let go of WFH, because public health is an institutionally corrupt and unethical profession at every level. Because you can't do something like lock down a country and then admit it was a bad idea, in a reputation based field, whilst keeping your status and career. Because lying is easier than admitting the truth. Because lots of people like having an excuse to WFH instead of going to an office. Because, because, because. But it's not because they work.
> The press fell into line and now, even two years later, we have the problem of people like yourself who assume
You realize this sounds very conspiratorial? The government's ego got in the way, the press is in on it, all the sheeple just swallow it!
Anyway no I'm not following much mainstream media, no idea what they say about lockdowns. I didn't hear it being called a success or failure anywhere honestly.
I do follow OWID data daily, looking at the various stats like excess deaths, deaths directly attributed to covid, share or positive tests, vaccinations, etc. I mostly make choices based on data, not media coverage (I don't even know what the current official rules in my country are anymore, they're always way behind the facts anyway).
Furthermore, elsewhere in this thread I wrote:
> In my circles (Netherlands/Germany) the people that go out all got covid, the people that could stay at home didn't. Not everyone has a choice here, like if you have school-age kids then you're almost guaranteed to get it through them.
That's what I'm basing this on. Idk if rules from the government help when the only ones following them are the people with a brain who'd have stayed at home anyway. Maybe it does because it creates a legal reason to keep your children at home during the worst of it (namely before we had vaccinations and keeping kids home actually saved lives).
> It was clear within a month or two
If that's so, what was this based on? Was there a single statistician on this earth that said they had sufficient and reliable data to draw such a conclusion after just one month? Or two? With a confidence high enough to say we might as well go and party rather than keep doing lockdowns, knowing that, if wrong, they'd kill a million people by the time we had enough counter-data?
By all means, share a link to such a post/comment if it was so clear to you and yours back then already.
We were sent home by police during our first lockdown. We had gone for a walk with the kids and were enjoying the sun sitting by the side of a local river with absolutely no-one else around.
That certainly wasn't a "voluntary behavior change".