1/ What would falsify the hypothesis that comprehensive lockdowns are more potent by orders of magnitude than moderate mitigation measures?

2/ You would think that the following would be enough:

A population without herd immunity and with community spread relaxes from lockdown to moderate mitigation and . . . transmission does NOT rise.

3/ In fact, the evidence from many places is even more stark.

For example, Denmark moved from a lockdown to moderate mitigation a month ago.

Since then transmission has not only skyrocketed but it has continued to DROP.

4/The same trend is apparent in Switzerland.

5/ Austria too. https://twitter.com/profkarolsikora/status/1263411337587277824

6/ These results are prima facie inconsistent with the “lockdown >> mitigation” hypothesis. They could be explained, no doubt. But they call out for an explanation.

7/ If we hold to the “lockdown >> mitigation” hypothesis on the basis of evidence, then these results should give us pause, as they are the opppsite of what our hypothesis predicted.

8/ If instead we hold to the “lockdown >> mitigation” hypothesis on the basis dogmatic conviction, then we will “know” that there is an explanation for these results that preserves the truth of our hypothesis.

9/ if our conviction is dogmatic,
we might even be tempted to anathematize those who emphasize the disconfirmatory data.

We will tell ourselves that we don’t want anyone to be misled into letting down their guard.

10/ There may be ways to explain away the seemingly contradictory evidence. It may be seasonality or cellular immunity that explains what is going on. If so, that would be good to know.

11/ It could also be that we are seeing evidence of Pareto-optimality at work. A small number of interventions do a large portion of the work. And those interventions remain intact post-lockdown. https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1264594385284427777

12/ If so, then the hypothesis that lockdown >> mitigation was wrong (and deadly in its wrongness).

By imposing controls beyond traditional mitigation, lockdowns imposed tremendous incremental human costs with insufficient incremental benefits.

13/ But if we just “know” that lockdowns >> mitigation—say, because Professor Ferguson brought this revealed truth down from Mt. Playa—then we won’t engage with the discrepant evidence. And we won’t learn from it.

14/ It will be interesting to see how rationally the orthodoxy reacts to the obvious disconfirmatory evidence of its central dogma.

No guarantees. With enough religious fervor, any hypothesis can be “saved” and ad hoc epicycles can grow as turgid as Ferg’s code