[Analytics] The hard truth about lockdowns and why they failed

The world’s search today for an answer (solution) to the coronavirus pandemic calls to mind the critic Susan Sontag and her witty hypothesis about answers to questions. Yen Makabenta specially for The Manila Times.

All the world seeks today an answer that will destroy the coronavirus and banish the pandemic once and for all.

Although many answers have been proffered, nothing has so far availed. Not the lockdowns, not the quarantines, not the social or physical distancing, not the face masks and not the police action against those disobeying the new rules. The virus marches on, threatening more deaths and infections.

Because it was once looked at as possibly the most promising answer to the pandemic, no strategic solution has been more criticized than the lockdown.

Although many countries are still in some form of lockdown or other, nearly everyone says now that a prolonged lockdown is unthinkable.

Only the threat of a second wave of Covid infections keeps the flag of restrictions waving.

Three-part series on lockdown

To acquaint readers with how thinking has shifted against the lockdown, I want to introduce today the work of Yinon Weiss, “a tech entrepreneur, a US military veteran, and a bioengineer by education” who wrote in the Real Clear Politics website a three-part series on the lockdown strategy.

Part 1 was titled “How fear, groupthink drove unnecessary global lockdowns”; part 2 discussed “How media sensationalism, big tech bias extended lockdowns.” Now he has come up with part 3, entitled “Unnecessary lockdowns created social turmoil, global suffering,” which was posted by RCP on June 11, 2020.

The Weiss series is incisive, comprehensive and compelling. He has gathered nearly all the necessary facts and addressed every issue.

I want to quote here substantial parts of the article because it is fully updated, and it explains why the lockdown failed as a strategy against the virus.

Economic blunder

Following are some key passages from the Weiss article:

“In the early days of the pandemic, there was debate over whether lockdowns were worth the economic costs. Now, with months of data, we know the verdict: Lockdowns did very little to save lives, were not worth their economic costs, and their collateral damage could lead to far more deaths worldwide due to social turmoil and disruptions in medical care and food supplies.

“The Covid-19 lockdowns may be one of the biggest medical and economic blunders of all time, and those who supported them may have a hard time reconciling their past views with new data. However, it’s not too late to have an open mind.

“Sweden’s success without a lockdown when compared to Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom and Belgium is often met with arguments that Norway, Sweden’s neighbor, experienced far fewer deaths, supposedly due to its lockdown. But Norwegians themselves are not so certain. Prime Minister Erna Solberg conceded that she enforced the lockdown out of fear and panic, and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health now says that the country could have achieved the same effects by ‘not locking down.’

“Japan recently ended its state of emergency after suffering only 851 deaths out of a population of 126 million with neither a strict lockdown nor mass testing, a result that highlights how little experts understand about this virus.

A false choice

“We should all recognize that Covid-19 is a serious disease that has killed over 400,000 people globally and more than 110,000 in the United States. Yet we should also recognize that Americans were presented a false choice of lives vs economy when it was always about lives vs lives. It’s not that we should have done nothing, but our sledgehammer policy did little to actually help those who were vulnerable to the virus and inflicted unnecessary suffering on those who could least afford it. Nearly 40 percent of the poorest households have lost a job.

“It’s understandable that so many people were early supporters of lockdowns when fear and panic drowned out data and reason. We should not, however, be so forgiving of experts who led us astray, nor to leaders who were so quick to destroy people’s livelihoods without strong evidence, without due process, and without full consideration for the unintended medical, societal and economic consequences of their decisions; all this for a virus which the CDC now estimates has a survival rate above 99.9 percent for people under 65.

“It is early and we don’t yet know exactly how this will play out, but the false narrative of lockdowns and the efficacy of their underlying models is disintegrating by the day.

“Evidence began to emerge early that lockdowns were not necessary nor effective. If lockdowns were effective, then one would expect flu deaths to drop precipitously after lockdowns started because the flu spreads in similar ways to coronavirus. However, we surprisingly find the opposite.

What successful reopenings taught us

“Experts predicted catastrophe in the absence of a lockdown in the US, a narrative that the media parroted unquestioningly.

“One remarkable element is that the percentage change in daily cases was going down even before lockdowns went into effect. We can see similar patterns in Europe where the number of deaths stopped growing around the same time no matter how strictly lockdowns were followed, when they started, or if they even started at all.

“Countries with more outdoor mobility tended to have fewer per capita deaths, though this doesn’t prove cause and effect….

“The viral reproductive number (Rt) was already on its way down and had its most significant drop before lockdowns started. Furthermore, we see no meaningful change to the viral trends when lockdowns started nor when they ended.

“A German study showed that the viral rate dropped below 1 — the critical number needed for the virus to decay into extinction — a full three days before the national lockdown there even started.

“A similar report found that infections peaked in the United Kingdom several days before their lockdown started and that the lockdown did not improve the downward infection trajectory.

“Germany and the UK are not exceptions. A JP Morgan report found that lockdowns failed to alter the course of the pandemic for nearly all US states and countries worldwide. Theoretical models will continue to claim that lockdowns were essential, but the emerging mountains of real world data show that even if well-intentioned, lockdowns were simply not materially responsible for saving lives.

Why did lockdowns fail?

“Why did the viral rate drop before lockdowns? Why didn’t lockdowns help? Why didn’t lifting lockdowns hurt? Coronavirus spreads from person to person, so it only makes sense social distancing helps, right?

“First, far fewer people may be susceptible to the virus than assumed. Second, common sense social distancing exercised voluntarily before lockdowns, such as avoiding large indoor crowds along with simple hand washing, may have had the biggest impact on lowering the viral growth rate. The social distancing practiced by the Swedes and the Japanese during the pandemic without the threat of government coercion highlights the fact that coercive authoritarian measures, such as small business closures and arresting people for visiting a beach, were never necessary….

“To those who say that we couldn’t have known this back in March, that is plainly false. There were credible people warning us that we were ‘jumping off a cliff,’ including John P.A. Ioannidis of Stanford University School of Medicine. Ignoring the early warnings of skeptics was costly, particularly in the less-developed world.

“If the biggest victims of lockdowns are the poor and marginalized, it makes sense that the pain would be amplified in poorer countries….

“‘African economies are staring at an abyss,’ says Ethiopia’s prime minister, as sub-Saharan Africa faces its first recession in 25 years. South Africa may suffer 29 times more deaths from the lockdown than from Covid-19.

“The hard truth is that these shutdowns were an unnecessary catastrophe. If we want this not to be a total loss, we must learn from it. We must learn to not blindly trust experts, to not corrupt science for politics, and to not give up our most basic freedoms in the face of fear. If society can learn any of these lessons, then one day we will be able to say that this was truly not in vain.”