4 ms·

> Some places never locked down, like Sweden and South Dakota, and their death rate wasn't significantly higher Many factors: different demographics, populatio

> Some places never locked down, like Sweden and South Dakota, and their death rate wasn't significantly higher Many factors: different demographics, population density, culture, what does "locked down" mean in different countries / areas, what does "significantly higher" mean... One important point though is this probably confuses correlation and causation. Areas that were hit harder tended to lock down harder. > Overall there's no evidence that lockdowns actually reduced mortality People post this occasionally, and I'm going to keep calling bullshit. What happens is someone posts a fringe paper that supports their view whilst conveniently ignoring the large body of established scientific orthodoxy that supports the obvious conclusion: that restricting human interaction slows down transmission of a respiratory disease that transmits through human interaction.

brutusborn 3y ago
I agree that the mechanism for lockdowns helping is sound (less interaction -> less infection) but I still believe lockdowns were harmful overall (eg including aspects like additional deaths of despair - suicide and overdose, less healthy activities - exercise and socializing etc). I must admit this belief mostly comes from the claim Sweden did better, and the fact that where I live had almost no lockdowns and did better than the rest of my country. Do you know of any good evidence that lockdowns were effective, or are you calling bullshit based on intuition?
- chimprich 3y ago
  > I still believe lockdowns were harmful overall (eg including aspects like additional deaths of despair - suicide and overdose, less healthy activities - exercise and socializing etc). Lockdowns were absolutely harmful - I don't think anyone is claiming otherwise. They were effective in stopping health systems collapsing, which is why pretty much everywhere implemented them when it looked like their health systems were about to be overwhelmed. (cf Italy in early 2020). That would have been catastrophic compared to the harms of lockdown. In terms of suicides specifically, the evidence is not clear. I've seen studies that indicate suicide rates did not increase or actually fell during the pandemic, e.g. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(22)00303-0 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... . There were also fewer deaths from road traffic accidents etc. However, there were lots of other harmful effects such as secondary effects from the economic impact. > Do you know of any good evidence that lockdowns were effective, or are you calling bullshit based on intuition? There have been a number of studies concluding that lockdowns were effective. I doubt digging them up will convince any of the sceptics in this thread. But since you ask... how about this Royal Society report? https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/impact-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-on-covid-19-transmission/ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/impact-non-p...
  - brutusborn 3y ago
    I’m skeptical but open to changing my mind. The suicide paper was interesting, I think it makes sense that early in the pandemic suicides would decrease. I would be interested to see a similar analysis for 2022 and 2023 since I would expect there to be many second-order suicides (not a suicide during the lockdown but a later suicide as a result of lost social interactions, additional addictions and economic impacts). Are there any particular papers in the report that you think are evidence that lockdowns prevented health system collapse and were beneficial overall? I had a preliminary skim of it and decided to check the first relevant citation for lockdown effectiveness. It has the same problems as most of the studies I have seen: it does not include any of the second order effects. Of course virus transmission is reduced by limiting interactions but this is only one part of the story. This may be answered in some of the other references but I need to put it aside for now.
  - xorcist 3y ago
    We do not need to look further than excess mortality during the period. It's three years later now and the numbers are in. There is plenty of high quality data from all Western countries. However data driven policy decisions should be much more fine grained than that. We should instead identify specific situations where different type of lockdowns would make sense. But the data is clear. Prolonged periods looks bad, at closing schools were clearly the wrong decision on every time scale.

brutusborn 3y ago

I agree that the mechanism for lockdowns helping is sound (less interaction -> less infection) but I still believe lockdowns were harmful overall (eg including aspects like additional deaths of despair - suicide and overdose, less healthy activities - exercise and socializing etc). I must admit this belief mostly comes from the claim Sweden did better, and the fact that where I live had almost no lockdowns and did better than the rest of my country. Do you know of any good evidence that lockdowns were effective, or are you calling bullshit based on intuition?

chimprich 3y ago
> I still believe lockdowns were harmful overall (eg including aspects like additional deaths of despair - suicide and overdose, less healthy activities - exercise and socializing etc). Lockdowns were absolutely harmful - I don't think anyone is claiming otherwise. They were effective in stopping health systems collapsing, which is why pretty much everywhere implemented them when it looked like their health systems were about to be overwhelmed. (cf Italy in early 2020). That would have been catastrophic compared to the harms of lockdown. In terms of suicides specifically, the evidence is not clear. I've seen studies that indicate suicide rates did not increase or actually fell during the pandemic, e.g. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(22)00303-0 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... . There were also fewer deaths from road traffic accidents etc. However, there were lots of other harmful effects such as secondary effects from the economic impact. > Do you know of any good evidence that lockdowns were effective, or are you calling bullshit based on intuition? There have been a number of studies concluding that lockdowns were effective. I doubt digging them up will convince any of the sceptics in this thread. But since you ask... how about this Royal Society report? https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/impact-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-on-covid-19-transmission/ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/impact-non-p...
- brutusborn 3y ago
  I’m skeptical but open to changing my mind. The suicide paper was interesting, I think it makes sense that early in the pandemic suicides would decrease. I would be interested to see a similar analysis for 2022 and 2023 since I would expect there to be many second-order suicides (not a suicide during the lockdown but a later suicide as a result of lost social interactions, additional addictions and economic impacts). Are there any particular papers in the report that you think are evidence that lockdowns prevented health system collapse and were beneficial overall? I had a preliminary skim of it and decided to check the first relevant citation for lockdown effectiveness. It has the same problems as most of the studies I have seen: it does not include any of the second order effects. Of course virus transmission is reduced by limiting interactions but this is only one part of the story. This may be answered in some of the other references but I need to put it aside for now.
- xorcist 3y ago
  We do not need to look further than excess mortality during the period. It's three years later now and the numbers are in. There is plenty of high quality data from all Western countries. However data driven policy decisions should be much more fine grained than that. We should instead identify specific situations where different type of lockdowns would make sense. But the data is clear. Prolonged periods looks bad, at closing schools were clearly the wrong decision on every time scale.