9 ms·

Papers finding that lockdowns had little or no efficacy

25 points by weasel_words 5y ago

davidbanham 5y ago
Interesting that New Zealand and Australia were excluded from the study. Both had hard lockdowns and both eliminated the virus and are largely back to normal life. Makes me suspect the data was cherry picked to fit a desired outcome.
- SvenMarquardt 5y ago
  The fact they're both islands in the middle of the pacific is more than likely their saving grace.
  - davidbanham 5y ago
    That certainly helped, but we had infections cross the border and community transmission. We still have people entering the country through a 14 day hotel quarantine so we're still allowing infected people across the border into the country. The island nation part of it isn't the whole story. Restricting the rate at which it can spread through the community coupled with active and aggressive contact tracing certainly seems like it played a significant role. I'd be looking cockeyed at any study that chooses not to include the Australian and NZ datasets without a very robust case about why it's necessary.
- pedalpete 5y ago
  Though I agree with your conclusion, Australia and New Zealand didn't have "hard lockedowns". I live in NSW, we had 5 weeks where we weren't allowed to go to the beach. Victoria had VERY had lockdown for months. Borders were shut to most states for months as well. Aukland also had a hard lockdown for a few weeks. However, there weren't country wide lockdowns, and they didn't last as long as they have in many other places. At the same time. Speaking to family in the US, it seems the idea of "lockdown" is open to quite a bit of interpretation. My sister was complaining about the lockdown in California, and in the next sentence was telling me how excited she was to go skiing in a few weeks.....how do you go skiing in Colorado during a lockdown in California?
  - davidbanham 5y ago
    For sure the NSW situation was different to VIC. Compared to the way many other parts of the world is interpreting the word lockdown though, the differences are insignificant in terms of their "hardness". I don't think your characterisation of the NSW lockdown is entirely accurate, either. We were forbidden from leaving the home except for exercise in the local area within household groups, essential shopping and essential work. Schools were closed except to the children of essential workers, most offices shut down or reduced their capacity, cafes, restaurants, pubs and many other businesses were closed. It was a lockdown.
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  Indeed, I'd firstly people in NZ seem to be waaay more reasonable and understanding. Sure there were few brave ones, but everyone generally stuck to the rules and understood what public health means. Being an island somewhat helps, but it's not like other countries don't have borders that they can protect. Bureaucracy is pretty low in NZ so we've been able to throw together solutions of screening, etc within matter of a week. Impacted workers got wage subsidy within like 5 days of lockdown started. Heck even Apple took something like 10x longer to release their contact tracing API...
spoonjim 5y ago
One thing I noticed here in California is that the societal behavior followed its own curve independent of the lockdowns. Ie. People locked down before lockdown was issued by government. When government lifted the lockdown people remained at home. When people started going out and cases went up people started staying at home again, then the lockdown came. So the lockdown itself had no impact although the removal of the lockdown would not have helped Most of the businesses who lost their customers.
- smitty1e 5y ago
  The ripple effects will not settle soon. Cutting down on the American workaholic tendency to show up at work on death's door from illness will be useful. So will a telework shift. The scary part is the recreational authoritarianism on offer from some quarters.
- tester756 5y ago
  Let's be serious People weren't following those things seriously Some people cared, some didn't gave a fuck
bryanlarsen 5y ago
Study Ottawa Canada. 4 waves, and the wave peaked 2 weeks after the imposition of stricter controls for all 4. It's all about compliance, and Ottawa has fairly good voluntary compliance and little of the essential industry that escaped lockdown and has been fueling the outbreaks elsewhere in Ontario.
jjoonathan 5y ago
I spot-checked the first link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eci.13484 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eci.13484 The argument is the same well-hashed "Sweden is a counterexample" with mathematical window dressing. Bonus points for chopping the Sweden dataset before the big spike in Swedish cases even though the paper was published after the spike and is still being held up as a flagship example half a year after that. Like the other anti-lockdown papers I've spot checked, I'm not impressed.
- thu2111 5y ago
  They also look at South Korea. However, that doesn't really matter. Sweden is a counter-example because lockdown theory doesn't posit any sort of Swedish exception, so the existence of this place alone disproves the models. Going further or using longer term data is good, but strictly speaking unnecessary. Also, you're claiming that there was some sort of "big spike" in Swedish cases and that this would change the conclusions. It might do but if Sweden did anything since January it would have been tightening restrictions - around Christmas the international pressure got to their leaders and they started to get tougher, not laxer. So it would be hard to say that this would invalidate the conclusions. At any rate, lockdowns weren't justified on the basis of PCR positive results, they were justified on the grounds of deaths. Swedish death curves are the same as other countries that did hard lockdowns and there has been no big Swedish spike: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=USA~GBR~DEU~SWE https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... This is important because for Sweden the models predicted predicted ~90,000 deaths from COVID alone, there were 98,000 deaths in total from all causes in 2020. That's clearly a huge miss. Like the other anti-lockdown papers I've spot checked, I'm not impressed. And of the papers arguing lockdowns work, they're all free of methodology errors in your view? Because that's definitely not what I've seen. The thing with lockdowns is, it's ultimately very simple. You don't actually need any complex analysis to see the truth. You can just look at the predictions and then go to ourworldindata for the reported curves. You should see huge sudden drops or surges when lockdowns and mask mandates are imposed or released, and it should be visible in all the countries that made changes. Additionally countries that did nothing should be have dramatically bigger curves than those that did lots. You can't see anything like that in the data.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cosmotic 5y ago
Unrolled: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1349478824606502912.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1349478824606502912.html
rich_sasha 5y ago
I’m dubious of the papers. The Lancet paper uses data only up to 1st May 2020, so really not much. One uses the Imperial College model, which, after looking at the published source code, I am near certain is gibberish. My biases aside, peer review showed that it is very sensitive to input parameters, which is incidentally what the linked paper says about lockdown effects, so hard to take seriously IMHO. Another says that after subtracting the effect of minor restrictions, the major restrictions had no measurable effect. But surely harsher restrictions are only brought in when rates are going up a lot, so maybe these two effects cancel out? Everyone, except Australia and NZ, avoid harsh lockdowns as much as they can. Meanwhile, in the UK “2nd lockdown”, which was quite light, the overall R coef for Covid dropped below 1, but remained above 1 for the “British variant”, clearly showing that had the lockdown continued as it was, it would not be effective. Also there are just so many conspicuous timings with new cases peaking 1-2 weeks after harsher lockdowns are introduced, I think it’s hard to dismiss out of hand. Yeah, it’s technically possible that the causality isn’t there but I struggle to believe that.
version_five 5y ago
Where I am, they were a populist measure to get votes, so in that regard, I'd say they were "effective".

25 points by weasel_words 5y ago

Interesting that New Zealand and Australia were excluded from the study. Both had hard lockdowns and both eliminated the virus and are largely back to normal life. Makes me suspect the data was cherry picked to fit a desired outcome.

SvenMarquardt 5y ago
The fact they're both islands in the middle of the pacific is more than likely their saving grace.
- davidbanham 5y ago
  That certainly helped, but we had infections cross the border and community transmission. We still have people entering the country through a 14 day hotel quarantine so we're still allowing infected people across the border into the country. The island nation part of it isn't the whole story. Restricting the rate at which it can spread through the community coupled with active and aggressive contact tracing certainly seems like it played a significant role. I'd be looking cockeyed at any study that chooses not to include the Australian and NZ datasets without a very robust case about why it's necessary.
pedalpete 5y ago
Though I agree with your conclusion, Australia and New Zealand didn't have "hard lockedowns". I live in NSW, we had 5 weeks where we weren't allowed to go to the beach. Victoria had VERY had lockdown for months. Borders were shut to most states for months as well. Aukland also had a hard lockdown for a few weeks. However, there weren't country wide lockdowns, and they didn't last as long as they have in many other places. At the same time. Speaking to family in the US, it seems the idea of "lockdown" is open to quite a bit of interpretation. My sister was complaining about the lockdown in California, and in the next sentence was telling me how excited she was to go skiing in a few weeks.....how do you go skiing in Colorado during a lockdown in California?
- davidbanham 5y ago
  For sure the NSW situation was different to VIC. Compared to the way many other parts of the world is interpreting the word lockdown though, the differences are insignificant in terms of their "hardness". I don't think your characterisation of the NSW lockdown is entirely accurate, either. We were forbidden from leaving the home except for exercise in the local area within household groups, essential shopping and essential work. Schools were closed except to the children of essential workers, most offices shut down or reduced their capacity, cafes, restaurants, pubs and many other businesses were closed. It was a lockdown.
dzhiurgis 5y ago
Indeed, I'd firstly people in NZ seem to be waaay more reasonable and understanding. Sure there were few brave ones, but everyone generally stuck to the rules and understood what public health means. Being an island somewhat helps, but it's not like other countries don't have borders that they can protect. Bureaucracy is pretty low in NZ so we've been able to throw together solutions of screening, etc within matter of a week. Impacted workers got wage subsidy within like 5 days of lockdown started. Heck even Apple took something like 10x longer to release their contact tracing API...

spoonjim 5y ago

One thing I noticed here in California is that the societal behavior followed its own curve independent of the lockdowns. Ie. People locked down before lockdown was issued by government. When government lifted the lockdown people remained at home. When people started going out and cases went up people started staying at home again, then the lockdown came. So the lockdown itself had no impact although the removal of the lockdown would not have helped Most of the businesses who lost their customers.

smitty1e 5y ago
The ripple effects will not settle soon. Cutting down on the American workaholic tendency to show up at work on death's door from illness will be useful. So will a telework shift. The scary part is the recreational authoritarianism on offer from some quarters.
tester756 5y ago
Let's be serious People weren't following those things seriously Some people cared, some didn't gave a fuck

bryanlarsen 5y ago

Study Ottawa Canada. 4 waves, and the wave peaked 2 weeks after the imposition of stricter controls for all 4. It's all about compliance, and Ottawa has fairly good voluntary compliance and little of the essential industry that escaped lockdown and has been fueling the outbreaks elsewhere in Ontario.

jjoonathan 5y ago

I spot-checked the first link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eci.13484 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/eci.13484 The argument is the same well-hashed "Sweden is a counterexample" with mathematical window dressing. Bonus points for chopping the Sweden dataset before the big spike in Swedish cases even though the paper was published after the spike and is still being held up as a flagship example half a year after that. Like the other anti-lockdown papers I've spot checked, I'm not impressed.

thu2111 5y ago
They also look at South Korea. However, that doesn't really matter. Sweden is a counter-example because lockdown theory doesn't posit any sort of Swedish exception, so the existence of this place alone disproves the models. Going further or using longer term data is good, but strictly speaking unnecessary. Also, you're claiming that there was some sort of "big spike" in Swedish cases and that this would change the conclusions. It might do but if Sweden did anything since January it would have been tightening restrictions - around Christmas the international pressure got to their leaders and they started to get tougher, not laxer. So it would be hard to say that this would invalidate the conclusions. At any rate, lockdowns weren't justified on the basis of PCR positive results, they were justified on the grounds of deaths. Swedish death curves are the same as other countries that did hard lockdowns and there has been no big Swedish spike: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=7-day+rolling+average&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false&country=USA~GBR~DEU~SWE https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... This is important because for Sweden the models predicted predicted ~90,000 deaths from COVID alone, there were 98,000 deaths in total from all causes in 2020. That's clearly a huge miss. Like the other anti-lockdown papers I've spot checked, I'm not impressed. And of the papers arguing lockdowns work, they're all free of methodology errors in your view? Because that's definitely not what I've seen. The thing with lockdowns is, it's ultimately very simple. You don't actually need any complex analysis to see the truth. You can just look at the predictions and then go to ourworldindata for the reported curves. You should see huge sudden drops or surges when lockdowns and mask mandates are imposed or released, and it should be visible in all the countries that made changes. Additionally countries that did nothing should be have dramatically bigger curves than those that did lots. You can't see anything like that in the data.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cosmotic 5y ago

Unrolled: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1349478824606502912.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1349478824606502912.html

rich_sasha 5y ago

I’m dubious of the papers. The Lancet paper uses data only up to 1st May 2020, so really not much. One uses the Imperial College model, which, after looking at the published source code, I am near certain is gibberish. My biases aside, peer review showed that it is very sensitive to input parameters, which is incidentally what the linked paper says about lockdown effects, so hard to take seriously IMHO. Another says that after subtracting the effect of minor restrictions, the major restrictions had no measurable effect. But surely harsher restrictions are only brought in when rates are going up a lot, so maybe these two effects cancel out? Everyone, except Australia and NZ, avoid harsh lockdowns as much as they can. Meanwhile, in the UK “2nd lockdown”, which was quite light, the overall R coef for Covid dropped below 1, but remained above 1 for the “British variant”, clearly showing that had the lockdown continued as it was, it would not be effective. Also there are just so many conspicuous timings with new cases peaking 1-2 weeks after harsher lockdowns are introduced, I think it’s hard to dismiss out of hand. Yeah, it’s technically possible that the causality isn’t there but I struggle to believe that.

version_five 5y ago

Where I am, they were a populist measure to get votes, so in that regard, I'd say they were "effective".