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I think the generalizations of lockdowns as: "Lockdowns are defined as the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI). NPIs a

I think the generalizations of lockdowns as: "Lockdowns are defined as the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI). NPIs are any government mandate that directly restrict peoples’ possibilities, such as policies that limit internal movement, close schools and businesses, and ban international travel." renders the exercise kind of useless because it conflates unsuccessful half-measures implemented in most countries with countries that followed lockdown and elimination strategies. For China, New Zealand and a few others which largely eliminated the disease the almost complete prevention of deaths proposed by the models discussed in the articles seems accurate. And while I suppose you can write NZ off as a small island nation, China is the most populous country on earth. Yet it appears in the paper once in the introduction.

LorenPechtel 5y ago
This. It's clearly just another one of the myriad of deceptive Covid papers that we have been seeing recently. Get them on a pre-print server (no peer review) and spread them to the faithful. Calling masks a form of lockdown is utterly bogus. And even if they had proven their point all they would be showing is that half measures don't work. Simple thought experiment: If the world had basically been put on pause for April 2020--everyone stocks up in March, then spends the entirety of April at home where would we be now? (Use the stocks of PPE to protect those who have to be at their posts or people will die and they do not go home.) (Now, I'm not sure if there was enough food and the like around to actually permit this.)
- nradov 5y ago
  Who do you include in "everyone"? First responders? Military? Healthcare providers? Farmers? Homeless? Utility workers? Garbage collectors?
- DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
  It's already known that CoVID can be eliminated in individual countries. A number of countries got rid of it all the way back in early-to-mid 2020: China (including Taiwan and Hong Kong), New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Singapore, and several other places. The places that eliminated CoVID-19 in 2020 did far better than those that didn't, both in terms of preventing death (no cases means no CoVID deaths) and keeping society functioning more or less normally. Once CoVID is gone, you can reopen bars, restaurants, etc. without having to worry about the virus spreading. The main challenge after local elimination is preventing the virus from getting back in and reestablishing itself. The first line of defense is border quarantine. Behind that, you need ongoing surveillance (e.g., test everyone who shows up at a clinic with a fever or sore throat) to detect new outbreaks early. Once you detect an outbreak, you need to use tools like contact tracing (with mandatory quarantine and isolation), mass testing and, when absolutely necessary, local lockdowns to end it. The question is why more countries didn't follow this strategy. For any country able to pull it off, it was obviously worth it. China reopened in April 2020. Most people haven't experienced a lockdown since, life has been mostly normal, and there hasn't been any large outbreak since (the largest one was about 2,000 people in total). The main cost is that international travel is difficult, because you have to quarantine for 3 weeks when you return, but that doesn't affect most people.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
It is useful to describe what happened, ie what we got for the price we actually paid. You are correct that it is not useful for evaluating the outcome for what didn't happen.
DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
The fundamental assumption of this paper is wrong. In an epidemic, there is a sharp transition between exponential growth and decline. There is also a fundamental difference between temporarily reducing case numbers and then letting them grow again, and reducing case numbers to zero. Some countries, like China, New Zealand and Australia, competely eliminated the virus using lockdowns and other measures (like contact tracing). Other countries locked down, but not hard enough to get rid of the virus. Then they reopened and let the virus spread like wildfire. Treating these two strategies as the same is nonsensical. The zero-CoVID strategy (China, NZ, etc.) is fundamentally different from the mitigation strategy (most countries). They both use lockdowns, but in very different ways and with competely different outcomes.
- a0-prw 5y ago
  The zero-Covid strategy is not sustainable. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-in-china-cases-lockdown-omicron-variant-us-alert-beijing-olympics/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-in-china-cases-lockdown-o... China is still locking down whole cities. Denmark is back to normal. Once Omicron gets into a country, that's it. Eventually, they will have to bite the bullet.
  - DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
    There is currently no major city in China under lockdown. China relies much more heavily on contact tracing and mass testing than on large-scale lockdowns. At the height of the "wave" this winter (which means about 200 infections/day), about 20 million people in China were under lockdown, out of a population of 1.4 billion (that's less than 2% of the population). That "wave" was successfully contained, and the major city that was under lockdown, Xi'an, reopened (the lockdown lasted 3 weeks). The vast majority of people in China have not experienced a lockdown since April 2020. > Once Omicron gets into a country, that's it. China has already successfully controlled a few Omicron outbreaks. Omicron is a bit harder to control, because the serial interval (the time from one infection to the next in a transmission chain) is a bit shorter, but it's not fundamentally different. Your contact tracing has to be faster to control Omicron, and Chinese contact tracing is very fast. They identify all close contacts of an infected person within hours. > Denmark is back to normal. The vast majority of China has been back to normal since April 2020. The advantage of zero-CoVID is that it allows life for the vast majority of people to go back much closer to normal for the vast majority of the time. If your neighborhood has an outbreak or if you're a close contact of an infected person, you may have to quarantine, but outbreaks are few and far between in China, so these measures only ever affect relatively few people. Danish people have been living with on-and-off restrictions for two years. The average Dane's daily life has been more restricted than that of the average Chinese person. > Eventually, they will have to bite the bullet. Not in the way that most countries have "bitten the bullet." Chinese public health experts have said that they will reevaluate the policy when drugs and vaccines render SARS-CoV-2 less deadly than the flu. We're not at that point yet. When/if China allows the virus to spread, it will be much less deadly, and China will not suffer the same sort of enormous death toll that the US and Europe have suffered.

LorenPechtel 5y ago

This. It's clearly just another one of the myriad of deceptive Covid papers that we have been seeing recently. Get them on a pre-print server (no peer review) and spread them to the faithful. Calling masks a form of lockdown is utterly bogus. And even if they had proven their point all they would be showing is that half measures don't work. Simple thought experiment: If the world had basically been put on pause for April 2020--everyone stocks up in March, then spends the entirety of April at home where would we be now? (Use the stocks of PPE to protect those who have to be at their posts or people will die and they do not go home.) (Now, I'm not sure if there was enough food and the like around to actually permit this.)

nradov 5y ago
Who do you include in "everyone"? First responders? Military? Healthcare providers? Farmers? Homeless? Utility workers? Garbage collectors?
DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
It's already known that CoVID can be eliminated in individual countries. A number of countries got rid of it all the way back in early-to-mid 2020: China (including Taiwan and Hong Kong), New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Singapore, and several other places. The places that eliminated CoVID-19 in 2020 did far better than those that didn't, both in terms of preventing death (no cases means no CoVID deaths) and keeping society functioning more or less normally. Once CoVID is gone, you can reopen bars, restaurants, etc. without having to worry about the virus spreading. The main challenge after local elimination is preventing the virus from getting back in and reestablishing itself. The first line of defense is border quarantine. Behind that, you need ongoing surveillance (e.g., test everyone who shows up at a clinic with a fever or sore throat) to detect new outbreaks early. Once you detect an outbreak, you need to use tools like contact tracing (with mandatory quarantine and isolation), mass testing and, when absolutely necessary, local lockdowns to end it. The question is why more countries didn't follow this strategy. For any country able to pull it off, it was obviously worth it. China reopened in April 2020. Most people haven't experienced a lockdown since, life has been mostly normal, and there hasn't been any large outbreak since (the largest one was about 2,000 people in total). The main cost is that international travel is difficult, because you have to quarantine for 3 weeks when you return, but that doesn't affect most people.

s1artibartfast 5y ago

It is useful to describe what happened, ie what we got for the price we actually paid. You are correct that it is not useful for evaluating the outcome for what didn't happen.

DiogenesKynikos 5y ago

The fundamental assumption of this paper is wrong. In an epidemic, there is a sharp transition between exponential growth and decline. There is also a fundamental difference between temporarily reducing case numbers and then letting them grow again, and reducing case numbers to zero. Some countries, like China, New Zealand and Australia, competely eliminated the virus using lockdowns and other measures (like contact tracing). Other countries locked down, but not hard enough to get rid of the virus. Then they reopened and let the virus spread like wildfire. Treating these two strategies as the same is nonsensical. The zero-CoVID strategy (China, NZ, etc.) is fundamentally different from the mitigation strategy (most countries). They both use lockdowns, but in very different ways and with competely different outcomes.

a0-prw 5y ago
The zero-Covid strategy is not sustainable. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-in-china-cases-lockdown-omicron-variant-us-alert-beijing-olympics/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-in-china-cases-lockdown-o... China is still locking down whole cities. Denmark is back to normal. Once Omicron gets into a country, that's it. Eventually, they will have to bite the bullet.
- DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
  There is currently no major city in China under lockdown. China relies much more heavily on contact tracing and mass testing than on large-scale lockdowns. At the height of the "wave" this winter (which means about 200 infections/day), about 20 million people in China were under lockdown, out of a population of 1.4 billion (that's less than 2% of the population). That "wave" was successfully contained, and the major city that was under lockdown, Xi'an, reopened (the lockdown lasted 3 weeks). The vast majority of people in China have not experienced a lockdown since April 2020. > Once Omicron gets into a country, that's it. China has already successfully controlled a few Omicron outbreaks. Omicron is a bit harder to control, because the serial interval (the time from one infection to the next in a transmission chain) is a bit shorter, but it's not fundamentally different. Your contact tracing has to be faster to control Omicron, and Chinese contact tracing is very fast. They identify all close contacts of an infected person within hours. > Denmark is back to normal. The vast majority of China has been back to normal since April 2020. The advantage of zero-CoVID is that it allows life for the vast majority of people to go back much closer to normal for the vast majority of the time. If your neighborhood has an outbreak or if you're a close contact of an infected person, you may have to quarantine, but outbreaks are few and far between in China, so these measures only ever affect relatively few people. Danish people have been living with on-and-off restrictions for two years. The average Dane's daily life has been more restricted than that of the average Chinese person. > Eventually, they will have to bite the bullet. Not in the way that most countries have "bitten the bullet." Chinese public health experts have said that they will reevaluate the policy when drugs and vaccines render SARS-CoV-2 less deadly than the flu. We're not at that point yet. When/if China allows the virus to spread, it will be much less deadly, and China will not suffer the same sort of enormous death toll that the US and Europe have suffered.