In the US places that were shut down longer were also places that were affected by the virus more. A more relevant comparison is Sweden with its neighbors. If

In the US places that were shut down longer were also places that were affected by the virus more. A more relevant comparison is Sweden with its neighbors. If you simply compare Sweden to Denmark (which was the worst performing Swedish neighbor), Sweden which never had an official lockdown, still saw its economy contract more than all its neighbors, had a death rate 5x that of Denmark (and 10x other neighbors) and a case rate 2x that of Denmark. Of course, it's hard to compare different economies, but the initial evidence indicates that not locking down does not help the economy either. Another interesting bit of evidence is that mobility data showed that in cities that were affected by the virus, reduction in economic activity preceded lockdowns. Which indicates that the economy would be affected negatively irrespective of the lockdown. It's also not all that surprising. The reality is that the majority of people are not gonna want to be active while a deadly disease for which we have no cure/vaccine is running rampant. So a lockdown effectively only affects the behavior of those at the margin. Their activity affects the economy linearly, but will affect the spread of the disease exponentially. The marginal linear economic benefit of not having a lockdown could very easily be dwarfed by the economic impact of the greater spread of the virus. That being said, now that we have a much better understanding of the virus and how it spreads (we had absolutely no idea in the beginning when the blanket lockdowns were issued), targeted and limited lockdowns should be more than sufficient in societies where people generally tend to follow rules.