What a load of hogwash... The effect of lockdown is very clear on the graphs of new cases and deaths: the rate of increase slows down, peaks then falls fairly

What a load of hogwash... The effect of lockdown is very clear on the graphs of new cases and deaths: the rate of increase slows down, peaks then falls fairly rapidly as the lockdown is kept in place. Places where measures were relaxed too much have seen a resurgence of cases, looks at Iran suffering a third huge spike. Lockdowns are bad of course but they are the only recourse once when you are too late to act and have no PPE and no practical measures to cover your entire population. Lockdowns have terrible side effects as well but doing nothing will just overwhelm you health system in a matter of weeks, and more people will die. It's what happened to Italy before it implemented lockdown. It's what's happening in the UK because they were late to the party and inconsistent with their measures. The main factor of success is how seriously and early countries took effective measures. Australia may have hot weather and a spread out population but they did a lockdown and took measures early. Hong Kong has nearly 8M people and is one of the densest places on earth and only had about 1000 cases and only 4 deaths... no lockdown but as soon as people go wind of what happened in Wuhan, nearly everyone in HK was wearing masks and sanitizing like crazy. Lockdown is the only option when you did nothing for weeks while watching other countries struggle.