Scrutable

Summary box

Restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID-19 (known as ‘lockdowns’) are associated with health harms

However, it is challenging to determine whether lockdowns have caused the harms or whether these harms are a direct consequence of the underlying health disaster of the pandemic

Careful analysis of excess mortality suggests that lockdowns are not associated with large numbers of deaths in places that avoided large COVID-19 epidemics (eg, Australia, New Zealand)

This evidence must be weighed against the very severe harms caused by COVID-19 itself, as seen for example in Brazil and India

It is unlikely that government interventions have been worse than the pandemic itself in most situations using data collected to date

wilsontown wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:51 pm

But the harms of lockdown are not just medical harms, they are also social and economic.

monkey wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 21, 2021 6:39 pm

wilsontown wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:51 pm

But the harms of lockdown are not just medical harms, they are also social and economic.

Yes, but mortality is a reasonable thing to look into. I can remember several lockdown skeptics nobends last year claiming that the lockdowns were killing more people than the virus.

lpm wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 21, 2021 7:07 pm

monkey wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 21, 2021 6:39 pm

wilsontown wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:51 pm

But the harms of lockdown are not just medical harms, they are also social and economic.

Yes, but mortality is a reasonable thing to look into. I can remember several lockdown skeptics nobends last year claiming that the lockdowns were killing more people than the virus.

Yes but yes but, we know very well that long term bad health and mortality is linked to poverty, poor education etc. So it depends on the exact question - the BMJ study looks at the very short term, a different study would consider knock-on effects.

wilsontown wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 21, 2021 9:13 pm

I think that's all fair, it's inevitably going to be a complex picture. For me, lockdowns are terrible in myriad ways and the only justification for them is that you are out of other options.

However, when you consider the impact of lockdowns in context, as a choice between bad and worse, the evidence is quite strong that they usually aren’t worse than the disease they are designed to combat. There are caveats to this, of course, and it’s likely that some restrictive measures have not been beneficial on the whole in some places in the world. Nevertheless, because Covid-19 is so bad — and it is truly shocking, not just the death toll from the disease, but the impact on society when large proportions of the population get sick at the same time — that lockdowns are in most circumstances much less damaging than letting Covid-19 run wild.