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Seems pretty obvious by this stage that lockdowns don't bring benefits proportional to the massive costs. Just look at Peru, who "locked down hard, locked down

• stuaxo 6y ago
  Newzealand, Australia and Taiwan are places where businesses operate as usual.
  • sandworm101 6y ago
    And parts of Canada, the so-called "maritime bubble".
    • II2II 6y ago
      It is also worth considering that the maritime bubble is employing strategies in addition to business closures that likely has a lot more to do with the region's success. For example: most people entering the region must go through two weeks of self-isolation. When infection rates went up in the fall, self-isolation became mandatory for most people when travelling between provinces within the region. This made it much more difficult for the virus to be reintroduced after it was more-or-less eliminated from the regions. With reduced numbers in the fall it was also practical to guess where the virus may be spread, which resulted in more targeted business closures. Other factors, such as timing, undoubtedly played a role. Extremely low infection rates at the start of the school year meant that the respective governments weren't pressured into opening schools prematurely (i.e. they could open on schedule) and the delayed outbreak in the fall meant that tightened restrictions around Christmas were better accepted (e.g. people could see what was happening in other parts of the country). The reasons for bringing this all up is more to point out that there was a lot going on besides mandatory lockdowns or business closures. I suspect that it will take years to collect and analyze data to get a coherent idea of how policies interacted and how to employ them effectively. But that is all a moot point for the period the study examined (early in the pandemic, when we were still trying to get a grasp on how the virus spread) and it may not be relevant at the current point of time because the initial response tainted people's emotional responses.
  • matz1 6y ago
    Whats the evidence that they can't operate as usual without lockdown?
  • titzer 6y ago
    I spent ~10 months--pretty much the entire pandemic--in Australia. They locked down early, banned international travel, effectively quarantined incoming travelers, rationed repatriation, locked down, social-distanced, and supported business owners and those affected with direct cash payments. There are still flare-ups that come from international travel not being quarantined well, but because of all of these early efforts, life started to get back to normal. The virus is effectively eradicated there. I don't know where their vaccine program is now, but they actually have a shot at completely beating COVID--forever. I feel like the US and Europe never really had very effective lockdowns, and far too many infections were already going before they could have been very effective anyway. So I don't think that we even speak the same language when we talk about lockdowns.
    • collyw 6y ago
      How do you account for Peru? Locked down hard, locked down early. Didn't do them much good.
• matthewmacleod 6y ago
  It does not seem at all obvious which is exactly why we have fucking research.
  • collyw 6y ago
    We should have had some research before trying this enormously costly experiment. Considering the massive costs and suffering caused by lockdowns, it should be expected that we see some obvious benefit, not just cries of "it would have been so much worse if we didn't". I have watched in winter as governments react to coronations case rise by tightening measures, yet the case numbers go up and down independently of these measures.