Given the other stories posted on this site (universally claiming lockdowns were pointless and no medical reason for them), makes me question whether these stories are representative.
“The study found that from March through August 2020, implementing widespread lockdowns and other mitigation in the United States potentially saved more lives (866,350 to 1,711,150) than the number of lives potentially lost (57,922 to 245,055) that were attributable to the economic downturn.”
However, don’t take my or anyone else’s word for it. The research is publicly available if you go looking.
> We attributed all COVID-19 lives saved (relative to the unmitigated counterfactual) to the public health measures (lockdowns, social distancing recommendations, masking recommendations), even though some voluntary behavioral modifications (e.g., limiting social contacts, trips to the store, or non-essential travel outside the state) would likely have taken place among the public even in the absence of these government interventions.
I think the most interesting studies are those that try to figure out the effectiveness of government intervention based on the timing of the lockdown. IIRC (big if), the timing of government intervention didn't matter much indicating that because of self imposed behavioral changes were about as effective as government intervention (or that people ignored government imposed lock-downs, ha ha). But take that with a big grain of salt.
[0] https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/lockdowns-during-early-pandemic-...
[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Why? It’s an exponential curve, either the number of cases is increasing or decreasing it makes little difference until you swap from one to the other. There is zero evidence that purely voluntary methods would have worked.
Further, the problem with using a zero policy baseline is voluntary lockdowns would also wrecked the economy. Movie theaters etc can’t operate if 90+% of the population including their staff is staying home. You can try and get some sort of synthetic baseline economic harm without government policies but you also get feedback loops of people staying home more as the situation falls apart.
That’s especially true of foreign countries. China’s lockdowns appeared to be extremely effective, but they where going to wreck US supply chains irrespective of the US response to COVID.
It’s even possible that government shutdowns reduced overall economic harm. Remember, lockdowns prioritized essential services, the disease wouldn’t have been so discriminatory. The zero government intervention baseline likely results in major disruptions in essential services like food delivery.
The question is if they’re a useful endgame tool, after we have testing and treatments and vaccines. Absent the authoritarian measures China is deploying, the answer appears to be no: enough people skirt the rules to permit community spread.
So allowing controlled spread after a successful vaccination campaign while avoiding overwhelming hospitals was the long term strategy if vaccination never hit herd immunity. Yes, we had strings like mask mandates last winter, but public schools where open almost everywhere even as the number of new cases spiked to unprecedented levels. The core difference was the dramatic reduction in hospitalization rates meant the healthcare system could cope with a spike of that magnitude.
But probably those mainstream voices are not that interested in either.