The issue of locking down a city or state has become increasingly divisive. In 16 years of writing, none of my articles have elicited a more emotional response than my recent suggestion that locking down a city may cost more lives than it saves.
Alas, citywide lockdowns seem akin to Queensland’s decision, in 1935, to introduce cane toads to control beetles — well intentioned, but ultimately flawed.
To assess the success of the strict and seemingly never-ending Victorian lockdown, we need to answer two questions. First, if regions don’t lock down, how many incremental deaths will occur? Second, when lockdowns do happen, how many incremental deaths will occur as a result of the lockdown?
Advocates of the hard lockdown (the majority of people) have been focussed almost solely on question one. But let’s first consider question two, the answer to which is less obvious as state premiers don’t provide daily updates on such data points — like how many people take their own life as a result of the pandemic.
Professor Patrick McGorry, who is on the front line dealing with youth mental health issues, told the AFR that “another six weeks of a much more severe lockdown, people losing their jobs and youth unemployment, the consequences are severe on mental health”.
University of Sydney modelling suggested COVID-19 could lead to a 25% increase in the suicide rate if unemployment reaches 11%. Royal Children’s Hospital director of emergency medicine Stuart Lewena said that mental health presentations were up 36%, while Kidman Centre director Dr Rachael Murrihy warned that “the hospital figures are quite frightening”, with a 10% increase in self-harm presentations in Victorian hospitals, including a 33% spike for people aged under 18.
And it’s not just the lockdown that’s a concern, but the depression that can result from stagnation and long-term unemployment. When JobKeeper — which is paying the salary of around 20% of Australian workers — ends, there is likely to be a significant increase in unemployment as zombie firms shut.
A study of the 2007 economic downturn found that “in times of recession, unemployed males commit suicide at 4.62 times the rate of employed men, and women 8.44 times more compared with employed females”.
Perhaps sensing the urgency, Health Minister Greg Hunt announced that the federal government will spend $31.9 million to open 15 mental health clinics in Victoria for a period of 12 months.
The impact of the lockdown on domestic violence is potentially even more widespread. As reported by the Nine papers, a study of 15,000 Australian women by the Australian Institute of Criminology found that “one in 10 Australian women in a relationship have experienced domestic violence during the coronavirus crisis, with two-thirds saying the attacks started or became worse during the pandemic”. The AFR reports that urgent applications to the Family Court increased by almost 200% between March and July.
Then there’s the less deadly — but still concerning — economic impacts of the continued lockdown. The Productivity Commission found that “young workers could face long-term consequences in the form of occupations lower on the jobs ladder and lower salaries than they might have expected in the early part of the century”.
Now let’s turn to question one. The obvious positive of hard lockdown is that fewer people will die from COVID-related illnesses. But the question here is incrementality — and as I noted last week, epidemiologists have consistently overstated the virus’ impact.
In April, the Doherty Institute and Monash University released modelling (used by the Victorian DHHS) which claimed that “without the measures put in place, Victoria’s potential death rate would have averaged 70 a day, and up to 650 deaths a day at its peak. Under this modelling, up to 36,000 Victorians would have died.” We’ll go back to this claim shortly.
What makes COVID-19 such a difficult virus to model is that it’s relatively contagious and highly asymptomatic. A Stanford University study of the Diamond Princess cruise ship reported more than 50% of cases were asymptomatic.
And as I discussed last week, University of NSW blood testing suggested that Australia’s case fatality rate is currently around 0.1%. (The gold standard, Singapore, has suffered 27 deaths and has a reported case fatality rate of only 0.04%.)
In March, the World Health Organization (WHO) claimed the case fatality rate was a concerning 3.4%. Two weeks ago, it released a new study noting a far lower rate of only 0.5% to 1%.
So it seems COVID-19 is less deadly than everyone initially thought. But to determine incrementality, we need to understand how many lives lockdowns saved. Pointing to a country like New Zealand or Israel and saying lockdowns aren’t needed is fallacious. Instead, we need to look at the few regions that didn’t aggressively lock down.
Anti-lockdown poster child Sweden (about 40% of the population of Australia), has recorded 5700 deaths. However, Sweden’s death rate was inflated due to initial incompetence — 90% of Swedish aged care residents who succumbed to COVID-19 were never moved to a hospital.
Florida, which has a similar population to Australia and which reopened businesses just weeks after belatedly locking down, has recorded 9452 deaths. Belarus, whose colourful leader Alexander Lukashenko called COVID-19 “mass psychosis” and where soccer was played in front of fans throughout the pandemic, claimed 607 deaths (out of a population of 9.5 million).
While the expert narrative suggested that COVID-19 would ravage the population, actual results show something different — regions that didn’t lock down didn’t seem to suffer anywhere near the deaths that we were warned about.
Remember the suggestion that 36,000 people would die in Victoria alone if lockdowns weren’t enforced? Sweden, with almost double the population of Victoria, suffered fewer than 6000 deaths.
Questioning the number of net lives saved from lockdowns is not to suggest we shouldn’t be taking measures to protect the vulnerable. Rather, it is understanding that there are human costs to closing down a city for months — more suicides, more domestic violence, more long-term unemployment, more loneliness, more marriage breakdowns.
To simply ignore the damage caused by lockdowns, while clinging onto overstated claims of COVID-19’s lethality, is no different than suggesting the virus is caused by 5G towers.
For anyone seeking help, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue is 1300 22 4636.
Its a valid argument provided one thinks that there is no economic downturn if one does not lockdown. Whatever the statistical consequences for death rates, I don’t buy people enthusiastically going to crowded stores, cinemas, planes etc when they might catch COVID-19 and suffer a significant or fatal illness. The US has barely managed anything that looks like containment or shutdown, and it is still having a recession. I would argue that if one could get to local elimination then it would be the best thing for the economy.
I think we have to look at why people don’t go to stores and restaurants as much during the pandemic even if there is no lockdown. I think it is probably because of what the media and government are telling them about the risks, which Schwab says has been exaggerated. Also, I think there would be ways to social distance to adequately reduce risks of spreading the disease without wrecking the economy, such as making mask wearing compulsory in public, perhaps telling people to separate by 1.5 m where possible, maybe even moderately reducing the number of people allowed in enclosed places such as shops. Perhaps these things could have been enforced better without going too far with the measures.
I’ve made this argument numerous times Altokoi. Some people are hanging on to the idea that the economy would snap back and all would be well, apart from those millions who end up getting the disease because we haven’t locked down.
The economic hit will be substantial whether we lock down or not, it isn’t going to snap back, never was, so the argument is about how much extra economic and other effects occurred due to lockdown, which are likely to be much less then the let her rip crowd imagine.
And they don’t want to count the thousands of lives saved by the lockdowns, now numbering in the thousands in terms of flu deaths avoided, hundreds of car accident deaths avoided, and many other beneficial effects. They also seem to discount the lost work days if a million and more Australians have to take at least two weeks work off when they get the virus, and the many more weeks for those who suffer much more debilitating conditions, some for 7 months and counting, and of course those 20,000 or 200,000 deaths.
It is in fact the let her rip crowd who want to count all the costs of the lockdowns and none of the benefits, and deny the costs associated with letting her rip.
Adam picks the splinter out of his opponent’s eyes, while ignoring the log in his own. C’est la vie.
Wow concerned for people’s mental health when on welfare and low wages now…… funny don’t remember you advocating for a rise in dole or increased finding for mental health before now…. Robodebt caused spike in suicide and I heard crickets, how am I supposed to believe your sudden concern isn’t about your business rather than community welfare?
I can hear the sound of a nail being hammered on its head.
2,000 dead after receiving robodebt notice:
https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/2030-people-have-died-after-receiving-centrelink-robodebt-notice/10821272
Yes, LuxuryEscapes.com is a real giveaway.
You make a very good point Linda. The crocodile tears are hard to swallow.
It’s strange that the argument for adopting a ‘do nothing, stay open’ response to CoVid19 never seems to come from medical experts, epidemiologists or qualified statisticians, but only from business people whose profit margins might benefit from such a strategy. Maybe those arguments are put forward in good faith, maybe they are not. Until I hear those same arguments put forward by someone who genuinely knows what they are talking about, though, I’m not going to give them much credence.
I don’t have time to do a full analysis of the logical errors in this article, so I’ll just point out a few things:
“Florida, which has a similar population to Australia and which reopened businesses just weeks after belatedly locking down, has recorded 9452 deaths. ” Australia’s death count at the moment is just over 300, which makes Florida’s death rate about THIRTY times higher. Plus, the pandemic isn’t over in Florida yet. They are showing no sign of getting a handle on things. Most of Australia, by contrast, has things under control: even Melbourne seems to be slowly coming down.
So far, no developed country has had their medical capacity totally overwhelmed by the virus. The current mortality rate reflects this. However, mortality rates will increase considerably if capacity is over-run. Original projections were based on this eventuality and because virus is so contagious, it still has the capacity to do that very quickly. It will continue to be able to do so until there is a vaccine.
It isn’t just a matter of deaths. It can cause severe health compromise in those who survive. These sufferers – who are mostly younger (because the older ones tend to succumb) – have decades of health struggles to look forward to for the remainder of their lives, not to mention the long term medical costs of caring for them.
I could go on. It would probably take an article almost as long as the original to deal with all its faults. In the mean time, all it’s doing (it and similar stuff coming out of the Murdoch press) is encouraging some people to ignore medical advice and, as a result, drag this whole business of lockdowns out even longer.
I agree that a hard lockdown is not sustainable and is very hard on everyone- we are living through stage 4 currently in Melbourne. Some level of lockdown however is required- whatever is needed to flatten the curve. We have constantly tried not to overwhelm our health services and we understand that they were hardly undersubscribed pre Covid. I’m sure doctors can’t wait to choose who they let die in the crowded corridors of the hospital- sorry- were the scenes in Italy earlier in the year staged?
I’m tired of humans thinking we can bend this virus to our will.
The mental health issues that are resulting from unemployment didn’t crop up over night. The coronavirus is exposing the long term effects on humans of job uncertainty as the gig economy and job casualisation has taken off and jobs have moved off shore in the last decades. We know that a “job for life” is out dated and we are supposed to just roll with that. And let’s not get onto growing income inequality or housing prices. This virus is the final straw for many as we have driven a caring society into the ground for the sake of economic growth- which has only contributed to increasing inequity and polarisation- hello America!
I’ll also add that Sweden’s “success” is a furphy. They have suffered almost the economic damage of the comparable Denmark with 10 times the deaths.
“To simply ignore the damage caused by lockdowns, while clinging to overstated claims …”.
I don’t recall any government leader around Australia, from either side of politics, ignoring the personal and economic damage entailed by the restrictions they imposed. Quite the contrary, but they have opted to follow expert medical opinion on the most appropriate responses to safeguard lives and ultimately, longer term, the economy. Silly weren’t they, should have asked a travel agent what was the best approach.
Schwab is consistently selective in which factors which he cares to consider.
“Schwab is consistently selective in which factors which he cares to consider.”
Yes, death as a statistic, but no attention to the ongoing and lingering effects of the disease, and as yet unknown, how much of that will become long term health problems.