There are two very different versions of the COVID truth. The first is that strict interventions, especially lockdowns, saved lots of lives. The second is that lockdowns were not merely ineffective but caused more harm than good. The second view is favoured in many ways by the recently released Fault Lines report, funded by three non-profit organisations and chaired by Peter Shergold AC.
The first version, still remarkably supported by many, is that the approach — first implemented by the Chinese Communist Party — was instrumental in saving lives. (Jason Murphy in Crikey recently even wondered “if China knows something” with regard to its COVID lockdown policies.) But the notion of Chinese superiority is likely news to the millions of Chinese citizens forcibly locked in their tiny apartments for months on end, or sent to prison camps masquerading as quarantine centres while their pets are brutally murdered — yes, that happened.
Before 2020, quarantining the most at-risk population had never genuinely been attempted on a mass scale. In a remarkable feat, the CCP managed to change the global narrative in early 2020. In February 2020, with President Xi Jinping (recently anointed leader for life) facing the most significant threat to his control after the highly publicised death of whistleblower Li Wenliang, the CCP undertook its now infamous Wuhan lockdown. Most remarkable wasn’t that the powerful CCP was able to implement the 76-day lockdown, but that it was able to convince other Western nations (at first Italy but then much of the world) of the benefits of locking down the healthy to protect the at-risk population.
Most remarkable wasn’t that the powerful CCP was able to implement its 76-day Wuhan lockdown, but that it was able to convince other Western nations, such as Italy, of the benefits of its COVID management.
There have essentially been two major points of argument. First, were lockdowns and other non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) effective tools in reducing the fatality rate of COVID? Second, did the consequences of those interventions usurp any alleged benefits?
With regards to the first question, thankfully, because different countries and states took different approaches to NPIs, we are able to compare different fatality rates from different regions.
For lockdowns to have been genuinely effective, regions that refused to take such measures would need to have experienced far higher excess deaths and COVID-related deaths. Perhaps counterintuitively, in many cases, the opposite occurred — with some regions that locked down instead experiencing more excess deaths. The most obvious (but certainly not only) example was oft-criticised Sweden, which took a lighter-touch approach. Sweden didn’t forcibly shut down non-essential workplaces. Instead, Sweden encouraged people to work from home and closed senior schools and universities (but allowed younger students to continue to attend in-person classes).
Perhaps paradoxically, Sweden suffered fewer excess deaths than many other countries that undertook lengthy lockdowns, including Peru, Italy, the US, Spain, Chile, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and France. Sweden even recorded fewer relative excess deaths than Hong Kong, which still, almost three years into the pandemic, requires returning residents to quarantine for three days.
Sweden was far from the only example though. South Dakota in the US provides another useful case study, having refused to impose any genuine interventions. It ended up down in 22nd spot out of 50 US states for relative COVID deaths (read the data here, when filtered by deaths per million). North Dakota, which also refused to lockdown residents, was in 33rd spot. Even Florida, which undertook limited restrictions after May 2020, ended up with a lower relative death rate than New Jersey.
The Fault Lines report provided an interesting study, showing an often negative correlation between the stringency of COVID measures and excess COVID deaths: Greece, Chile and Italy, all of which imposed stringent measures, had far higher excess deaths than the far less strict Sweden and Iceland:
Many misattribute lockdowns to lower deaths because some countries that were initially more successful at limiting fatalities adopted lockdowns as well as more effective border closures and accompanying quarantine rules.
Border closures coupled with strict movement restrictions appeared to work well in the short term for island states like New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Japan. But COVID rates would dramatically increase when the virus mutated into a form that even border closures couldn’t prevent. Fortunately, by the time the highly transmissible Omicron variant arrived, vaccines had materially reduced COVID’s lethality, so excess death rates remained subdued.
The data indicates that some regions that locked down performed better, others performed worse — and that in some cases strict stay-at-home orders appear to have been only moderately effective at slowing transmission.
One cited explanation for the ineffectiveness of Western-style lockdowns is the broad definition of essential services — because so many people continued to leave the home to work or shop, they inevitably contracted the virus, which quickly spread to family members. This explains why poorer, often larger, multi-generational migrant families were hardest hit during earlier lockdowns.
Unsurprisingly, these demographics bore most of the brunt of lockdown policies. While the uber-wealthy escaped to their super yachts and holiday mansions, in NSW alone, children aged between 13-17 received 3840 fines. One teenager with an intellectual disability received three $1000 fines for being outside their house. Areas of social disadvantage were hardest hit — Liverpool and Mt Druitt in Sydney’s west accrued $1 million in fines between July and October 2021, while leafy Rozelle received a mere $43,000. (The NSW government kindly allowed young fine victims to “work off” their debt, in a sort of Dickensian slave labour scheme.)
Extraordinarily, 90% of police activity during lockdowns in NSW related to enforcing pandemic rules.
The impact on children’s education is likely the most significant side-effect of lockdowns. Recent US NEAP test scores revealed that “the average reading score fell by five points, the largest drop since 1990. In math, scores dropped seven points, the first decline of any kind in the 50-year history of the test. Based on these results, the pandemic wiped out 20 years of student gains in both subjects.”
The largest drops were for Black and Latino students. Poorer students suffered twice the erosion as wealthier ones. Michael Bloomberg has called the situation a “national emergency”.
The Fault Lines report echoed this view, finding that “it was wrong to close entire school systems, particularly once new information indicated that schools were not high-transmission environments. For children and parents (particularly women), we failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes.”
A high-profile (and apolitical) recent article by The Lancet noted “nearly 370 million children across 50 countries have missed meals since school closures began, and that globally an estimated 39 billion in-school meals have been missed as a result of pandemic-induced school closures … One estimate from the World Bank suggests that this generation of children could potentially lose an estimated $10 trillion globally in their life earnings.”
The UK also saw dramatic decreases in reading ability, and as a psychology professor also noted: “the stunted progress extends beyond academic ability … we’re seeing children turning up at school who aren’t toilet-trained, not able to use cutlery or even speak properly.”
The pandemic response also coincided with UK childhood obesity significantly increasing from 9.9% to 14.4%, after decades of slow improvement. Unsurprisingly, locking children in their houses and preventing organised sport for months may not have led to positive health outcomes.
But the side effects of lockdowns aren’t exclusive to children. In the UK, alcoholism and smoking surged — according to the NHS, the proportion of “high-risk” drinkers increased from 12.4% to 17.4%, an increase expected to lead to 25,000 extra deaths and cost £5.2 billion. The number of young smokers also increased from 21.5% to 26.8%.
Also unsurprising has been the impact on domestic violence, as The Lancet noted: “Lockdowns also resulted in increased gender-based violence … the United Nations Population Fund projected in April 2020 that if the lockdown continued for six months or more, 31 million additional cases of gender-based violence could be expected to occur.”
That is saying nothing of the economic impacts of expansionary pandemic economic policies. Forced closures of Western economies forced debt-ridden governments to undertake a series of unprecedented fiscal and monetary expansions. Policies like Australia’s poorly designed JobKeeper or the United States’ US$2.3 billion in spending contributed to an outbreak of decades-high inflation. The need for central banks to quickly hike interest rates will lead to a near-certain global recession. Again, the victims will be the poor and disadvantaged who don’t own inflation-hedged assets like property or shares.
As The Lancet noted, “the epidemic response of many governments has been led by political considerations and hospital-system administrators rather than by public health considerations and specialists”. And with data showing the harms of lockdowns, the belief that you can control a highly transmissible respiratory virus remains lore for many.
To lockdown, or not to lockdown is discussed by many as though these were (and are) our only options, but there were (and are) other options available.
The scientists who authored the Great Barrington Declaration foresaw the harms of locking down everyone and said a more targeted approach was required – one where the vulnerable were protected, but young healthy people, who had excellent survival rates, were able to go about life as per normal, with the addition of taking action(s) to look after the immunocompromised and the elderly.
The authors, all professors at top universities, were vilified and labelled ‘unscientific’, despite having dedicated their lives to public health. Weird.
Lockdowns did save lives, but they did some harm too. We don’t have to be exclusively pro or anti lockdown…
Because they were and are ‘unscientific’, according to DeSmog UK 26 Oct. ’20:
‘A Right-Wing Think Tank Is Behind the Controversial Great Barrington Declaration Calling for COVID-19 Herd Immunity’
Another DeSmog headline in article that divulges links between climate and Covid science denial (players) 10 Aug ’20:
‘How the UK’s Climate Science Deniers Turned Their Attention to COVID-19. The coronavirus crisis quickly divided the population between those putting their trust in public health experts and others quick to question the science.’
Radical right libertarians, their think tanks and willing media to platform them.
I’ve never heard of DeSmog, Drew.
Yes, I know a few crazies joined the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) cause, but let’s look at the authors of the document.
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
(Yes, I just copied and pasted their bios!)
I listened to an interview of Jay Bhatttacharya and he struck me as a very thoughtful person, not prone to wild claims, and I saw little upon which political left or right ideology could be determined.
I think it’s dishonest to call their views ‘unscientific’. Achieving a complete scientific consensus is extremely rare – there are always competing views which have a scientific basis.
The further we get down the covid road, the more it appears that the GBD’s proposed focussed protection model is vindicated
Just because you have never heard of DeSmog neither discredits their nor others’ credible science analysis and criticism.
A list of scientists does not make any report ‘scientific’ or the report credible just ‘science’ sounding, but the actual science process does; the GB Declaration is simply Kochian ‘freedom & liberty’ PR through astroturfing.
According to sources used by CMD Center for Media Reporting in ‘How The Koch Network Hijacked The War On Covid’ (22 Dec ’21):
‘Hillsdale is a conservative Christian institution with ties to the Trump administration (Politico). And the scholars behind the academy — Scott Atlas, Jay Bhattacharya, and Martin Kulldorff — are connected to right-wing dark money attacking public health measures.
The trio also has ties to the Great Barrington Declaration, a widely-rebuked yet influential missive that encouraged governments to adopt a “herd immunity” policy letting Covid-19 spread largely unchecked’
Hey Drew,
Thanks for responding. My comment about being unaware of DeSmog was not intended to negate anything. I was simply expressing that I couldn’t comment on anything they said due my ignorance of it.
I watched an interview of Bhattacharya, and found him thoughtful and credible.
Being and appearing to be ‘thoughtful & credible’ is not science, but we are encouraged to respect beliefs and PR over science?
Your mind is clearly made up – you are certain Bhattacharya and co. are bought out hacks. Me, I’m not so certain.
Because so much of what has been presented about Covid, lockdown policies, vaccines and the like has had to be retracted and refashioned later. We were told it was transmitted via surfaces…oops, it’s an aerosol. Told vaccination would prevent transmission…now we’re told it was never part of the story, despite mountains of evidence otherwise. We were told the vaccines were ‘safe and effective’…now ATAGI has admitted it didn’t know about the elevated risk of myo- and peri-carditis in young males until 5 months after approval. And we’re still being told they’re safe and effective despite all the peer reviewed papers showing they’re massively ineffective at preventing contraction and transmission, and the record number of adverse reactions.
We were also told natural immunity wasn’t a thing, but it’s been shown to be far more protective than 2 doses of AZ, Pfizer or Moderna.
I’m not wise enough to know for certain what the right and scientific view is…so I’ll wait a little longer.
Thanks for chatting with me.
My car has broken down, so I’ll check out DeSmog while I wait for a tow truck…
Drew,
I looked up DeSmog…while the links they present about the GBD and money are concerning, and u take them on board, they don’t actually address the scientific underpinnings of the debate. Furthermore, DeSmog’s analysis is a full 2 yrs old – a lot has changed about Covid un that time.
Try this paper, published in Nature last year, which analyses both sides. It illuminates how disagreement arises in tricky problems like Covid and it makes little effort to be an arbiter / pick a winner. Ah, balance – it doesn’t give simplistic answers, but I love it.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00839-1
Think you have misinterpreted the article dropped in at the end? How is the article relevant to this discussion?
Because you want to promote media ‘fair & balanced’ and/or Trumpian ‘both sides’ yet the most recent references are from 2020, hardly indicates either full analysis or reflection by academics, with two of three in humanities & social sciences communication (?!), not health/medical science?
Nothing to do with my mind nor opinions, but following credible analysis & criticism of supposed ‘science’ i.e. presented a la Great Barrington Declaration (with a whiff of fossil fuels).
You are speaking through the same ‘pseudo science’ PR prism of climate deniers who either go out of their disciplinary area or/& follow junk science PR ie. deny, delay & attack/obstruct.
Okay Drew.
If you say so.
I know extremely intelligent researchers whose career goal is to get an article published in one of the premium journals, like Nature. If you read this article and don’t understand it’s relevance to what my comments, then either I am the worst communicator in the world, or you have a blockage preventing comprehension.
Getting an article on Covid-19 published in Nature last year is a massive achievement. This article shows there is merit on both sides of the lockdown argument (full lockdown vs GBD’s focussed protection), and there are value judgements taking place which differ between scientists, not because one is doing science correctly and the other side sux, but because we are all products of our cultures and our belief systems.
There are no clear cut right or wrongs in this equation.
If you want to believe that you know better, so be it.
P.S. your argument that scientists are unfit to comment outside their field of specialisation is the exact argument climate deniers used against Australian palaeontologist Tim Flannery. But the hypocrites listen to geologist and climate change denier Ian Plimer…
P.P.S. I believe this discussion would be far more productive if we were conversing face-to-face. No one who knows me would ever accuse me of being Trumpian, or trying to back fossil fuel interests, or denying climate change, or pretty much any right-wing cause.
Hope you have a wonderful day today Drew.
Fair enough, I do have some background in science, data, analysis and academic credibility, including the verification and use of sources e.g. articles.
An article in Nature is fine, but ‘one sandwich doesn’t make a picnic’ as credibility comes from multiple peer reviewed articles showing depth and breadth, then synthesis of common ideas by other academics from the same discipline that will be evaluated and reviewed over time.
Those who claim otherwise are gaming research process to cherry pick &/or promote a point of view for media PR; fossil fuels lobby have known well how to do by focusing upon peer reviewed outliers while ignoring their own research from ’60s-’70s showing global warming due to carbon emissions.
On the palaeontologist cited, there is nothing wrong with well structured inter-discipinary research, who is also a patron for a nativist NGO (linked to a fossil fueled network in US) that claims, without credible research evidence, that immigrants & population growth are an environmental ‘hygiene’ issue, not fossil fuels; what is his relevant expertise; and who is manipulating whom 🙂
The author spent the entire COVID period arguing that people should be able to travel….ideally to escape to luxury holiday destinations……and may not be objective in this matter. Vested interest?
There is a clear difference between lock-down pre-vaccine and post-vaccine. A major concern pre-vaccine was not just COVID deaths but the complete break-down of the health system. The inability to be able to cope with such numbers would lead to patients dying of not just COVID, but everything else, due to their delayed/omitted treatment.
I think the author is seeing what he wants to see here.
Cherry picked garbage once again from Schwab. Telling he didn’t mention his biggest gripe with lockdowns – his personal loss of wealth
I am also skeptical about these statistics. One obvious flaw in the argument is that lockdowns, masks and vaccinations were brought in to slow the number of infected people requiring treatment by the health system. A fact ignored by many critics and protestors. i.e. the health system was successfully protected from collapse. The actual final number of deaths could be regarded as irrelevant in this context.
Such an important point Myki. Who could forget the terrible scenes from New York and the tents in Central Park or the patients in the streets and the overcrowded morgues in the north of Italy. There were so many factors eg cruise ships in the Mediterranean, the incomparably smaller population in Sweden and the health system available to them. The sudden lockdown of the North Melbourne housing towers was informed by what happened to high rises in Hong Kong during SARS. At that time there were 200 cases mostly in just one of the many towers though it was not yet known. Many of those housed there were the low-paid workers servicing the major hospitals in that precinct – the Royal Melbourne, the Children’s, the Women’s Hospital. Failure to act immediately during that unvaxxed period could have been utterly catastrophic. It breached the rights of individuals in those towers but collectively it almost certainly saved the lives of many particularly as the cohort of tenants there included higher numbers of the elderly and disabled than in the general population. Were there harms? Yes there were economic harms some of them long term for many particularly gig workers and lost wages and superannuation for many others. It has been an incredibly horrible exercise in highlighting the acute inequalities in our society.
Schwab should be required to declare his bias before the publication of his not very well cherry picked statistics.
Schwab reports the overall testing results from the USA as meaning school lockdowns were detrimental. Actually those results show clearly the testing result declines were essentially the same in states that had no or very limited school lockdown and states that had extended lockdown. The figures show the opposite of what Schwab quotes them as meaning.
Schwab reports that Sweden’s more relaxed (formal) lockdown rules nevertheless meant much lower death and harm rates than some countries that locked down with harder (formal) rules. But the comparison with the other Scandinavian countries – similar in other ways that counted – shows clearly that Sweden performed much worse than comparable countries that locked down harder. Again the figures show the opposite of what Schwab says they mean.
Schwab gives figures for three years in bar graphs, preventing clear comparisons of ‘tough’ and ‘relaxed’ years. Australia’s tough years were low harm years; our relaxed year has been a very high harm year. Other countries show similar correlations.
And the Shergold report, using a small number of self-selected and auto-correlated sources, finds that the poorer and marginalised bore the burden of lockdowns disproportionately – but not that lockdowns didn’t work.
Perhaps a report from some other writer might shed more light.
Writers with related research expertise and producing a meta analysis of peer reviewed literature….. but that requires the threat of experts, research science and higher education
As someone who considers the lockdowns and closed borders to have been successful tools to combat Covid in Australia until vaccinations had reduced some of the risk, I’m always happy to read a well-reasoned argument to the contrary.
This one fails to qualify. This is spurious graphs of apples vs oranges, massive misuse of statistics and ridiculous conclusions. To take just one example, Italy fared worse than Sweden despite lockdowns? Italy had a prolonged lockdown as a result of the enormous death toll, which the lockdown was successful in controlling.
The “by country” graphs look very important, but comparing that many countries with the huge differences in health systems and population density just makes you look silly. As does quoting from various “reports” funded by private enterprise and easily grouped under the category “the best conclusions that money could buy”.
Mr Schwab’s attitude towards lockdowns and Covid has been evident and unyielding from the beginning and is the same selfish cry as other deniers have been voicing: “B-b-but it inconvenienced ME!!”