Given the other stories posted on this site (universally claiming lockdowns were pointless and no medical reason for them), makes me question whether these stories are representative.
Plenty of studies showed lockdowns worked. The long term impact on COVID in vaccinated vs unvaccinated populations has eroded how deadly people perceive COVID. Estimates vary especially around secondary effects like hospitals being overcrowded, but cumulatively lockdowns in the US saved in the low millions of lives.
“The study found that from March through August 2020, implementing widespread lockdowns and other mitigation in the United States potentially saved more lives (866,350 to 1,711,150) than the number of lives potentially lost (57,922 to 245,055) that were attributable to the economic downturn.”
However, don’t take my or anyone else’s word for it. The research is publicly available if you go looking.
I think we need to distinguish between government imposed lockdown and measure that people take on their own. The study you cited [0][1] assumed that people wouldn't do anything in lieu of a government imposed lockdown, which is patently false.
> We attributed all COVID-19 lives saved (relative to the unmitigated counterfactual) to the public health measures (lockdowns, social distancing recommendations, masking recommendations), even though some voluntary behavioral modifications (e.g., limiting social contacts, trips to the store, or non-essential travel outside the state) would likely have taken place among the public even in the absence of these government interventions.
I think the most interesting studies are those that try to figure out the effectiveness of government intervention based on the timing of the lockdown. IIRC (big if), the timing of government intervention didn't matter much indicating that because of self imposed behavioral changes were about as effective as government intervention (or that people ignored government imposed lock-downs, ha ha). But take that with a big grain of salt.
> I think we need to distinguish between government imposed lockdown and measure that people take on their own.
Why? It’s an exponential curve, either the number of cases is increasing or decreasing it makes little difference until you swap from one to the other. There is zero evidence that purely voluntary methods would have worked.
Further, the problem with using a zero policy baseline is voluntary lockdowns would also wrecked the economy. Movie theaters etc can’t operate if 90+% of the population including their staff is staying home. You can try and get some sort of synthetic baseline economic harm without government policies but you also get feedback loops of people staying home more as the situation falls apart.
That’s especially true of foreign countries. China’s lockdowns appeared to be extremely effective, but they where going to wreck US supply chains irrespective of the US response to COVID.
It’s even possible that government shutdowns reduced overall economic harm. Remember, lockdowns prioritized essential services, the disease wouldn’t have been so discriminatory. The zero government intervention baseline likely results in major disruptions in essential services like food delivery.
It's frustrating when anti-lockdown folks don't differentiate between lockdown now, when the disease is basically endemic and vaccines make COVID a non-issue for healthy/abled individuals, vs. in March 2020 when there was no vaccine, a mask shortage, a ventilator shortage, no consensus on transmission (the whole aerosol vs droplets shit), and just general pandemonium.
In my experience, the reason they don't differentiate is because they're implicitly arguing against the subset of pro-lockdown folks who don't differentiate. It's easy to forget, because most of us are understandably excited to memory hole the entire debate, but as recently as last fall there were mainstream voices arguing that it wasn't safe for kids to go to school.
Where are those mainstream voices now, in the grand scheme of things claiming that it's not safe for kids to go to school is a claim not rooted in science or statistics.
But probably those mainstream voices are not that interested in either.
I don’t think anyone questions the effectiveness when we literally didn’t know how Covid spread or how to treat it and our hospitals were getting overwhelmed.
The question is if they’re a useful endgame tool, after we have testing and treatments and vaccines. Absent the authoritarian measures China is deploying, the answer appears to be no: enough people skirt the rules to permit community spread.
I doubt any researcher believes our response was completely optimal or that US lockdowns would have ever eliminated COVID.
So allowing controlled spread after a successful vaccination campaign while avoiding overwhelming hospitals was the long term strategy if vaccination never hit herd immunity. Yes, we had strings like mask mandates last winter, but public schools where open almost everywhere even as the number of new cases spiked to unprecedented levels. The core difference was the dramatic reduction in hospitalization rates meant the healthcare system could cope with a spike of that magnitude.
It depends on how you value life and death. On one end of the spectrum, there are some people who think we should stop everything if it prevents a single death. On the other end, people who think they should be allowed to do whatever they want even if it clearly endangers others.
I don't think it's a question that the former extreme won out in most places wrt covid response.
The hard truth is that we have to put a price tag on life and death, because no matter what we do, it's going to contribute to someone's death. It's not a popular answer, but it's the only pragmatic one.
I just want to point out that I have the exact opposite perception, that the majority viewpoint on HN is very pro-authoritarian measures (though I think whether they work or not is immaterial, its a silly side discussion to avoid talking about whether a government should be able to impose them or not)
Anyway, I think the way you and I perceive HN is shaped by our initial bias. Knowing the "reality" is a lot tougher
I think it's a bit disingenuous to read "People here want lockdowns and masks to not work" and instantly paint it as being in favor of "pro-authoritarian" measures. I personally value individual freedoms but not at a level that erodes the individual freedoms of others. I prefer the freedom to not be murdered to the freedom to murder and I'll gladly accept the freedom to not get sick in exchange on some limits on what restaurants I can go to - that doesn't mean I'm on board with everything Stalin ever said.
We always live in the grey zone - there aren't absolute good actions we can take in the world so every choice needs to be a balnce.
It is not "immaterial" given that I was responding to this:
> Given the other stories posted on this site (universally claiming lockdowns were pointless and no medical reason for them), makes me question whether these stories are representative.
The topic was whether they work and what kind of stories show up on HN.
