The evidence in favor of the lockdowns is that Sweden (and many other countries) were unable to wall off their elderly, despite knowing that they needed to. Thi

The evidence in favor of the lockdowns is that Sweden (and many other countries) were unable to wall off their elderly, despite knowing that they needed to. This failure to quickly segregate the vulnerable isn’t really surprising: successfully isolating the elderly from a pandemic is very challenging, especially under crisis conditions where you have no warning and very little time to prepare. Other countries decided the only way they could handle the problem in the time allotted was to reduce the incidence of COVID in the entire population via lockdowns, on the theory that this would protect the vulnerable populations by preventing COVID from reaching them. Sweden rejected some of these restrictions and, tragically, had a much worse outcome among these vulnerable populations. ETA: It is concerning that even several months into the epidemic, with time to prepare better to protect vulnerable populations, Sweden now feels that stronger general restrictions are the right approach. It’s hard to see how that isn’t also an admission that those restrictions shouldn’t have been used in the early phases as well.