This will be my first and possibly last tweet (thread) as I am mostly here to learn. It is prompted by a recent study questioning lockdown efficacy that is getting a lot of attention. It appears people believe it to be the first of its kind, but I have been collecting similar
studies since March 2020. Below are 30 published papers finding that lockdowns had little or no efficacy (despite unconscionable harms) along with a key quote or two from each:
4. https://advance.sagepub.com/articles/preprint/Comment_on_Dehning_et_al_Science_15_May_2020_eabb9789_Inferring_change_points_in_the_spread_of_COVID-19_reveals_the_effectiveness_of_interventions_/12362645

“Official data from Germany’s RKI agency suggest strongly that the spread of the coronavirus in Germany receded autonomously, before any interventions become effective”
5. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.02090.pdf

“the decline in infections in England...began before full lockdown…[S]uch a scenario would be consistent with...Sweden, which began its decline in fatal infections shortly after the UK, but did so on the basis of measures well short of full lockdown”
6. https://www.datascienceassn.org/sites/default/files/Illusory%20Effects%20of%20Non-pharmaceutical%20Interventions%20on%20COVID19%20in%20Europe.pdf

“the UK lockdown was both superfluous (it did not prevent an otherwise explosive behavior of the spread of the coronavirus) and ineffective (it did not slow down the death growth rate visibly).”
“since the full lockdown strategies are shown to have no impact on the epidemic’s slowdown, one should consider their potentially high inherent death toll as a net loss of human lives”
12. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3588

“general social distancing was also projected to reduce the number of cases but increase the total number of deaths compared with social distancing of over 70 only”

“Strategies that minimise deaths involve the infected fraction primarily being in the
low risk younger age groups—for example, focusing stricter social distancing measures on care homes where people are likely to die rather than schools where they are not.”

“results presented in the report suggested that the addition of interventions restricting younger people
might actually increase the total number of deaths from covid-19”
14. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2652751/

“For pathogens that inflict greater morbidity at older ages, interventions that reduce but do not eliminate exposure can paradoxically increase the number of cases of severe disease by shifting the burden of infection toward older individuals”
15. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3607803

“Current policy can be misdirected and can therefore have long and even short-term negative effects on human welfare and thus result in not actually minimizing death rates (incorporating externalities), especially in the long run.”
16. https://imgcdn.larepublica.co/cms/2020/05/21180548/JP-Morgan.pdf

“For example, the data…shows a decrease in infection rates after countries eased...lockdowns with >99% statistical significance. Indeed...infection rates have declined after reopening even after allowing for an appropriate measurement lag.
This means that the pandemic and COVID-19 likely have its own dynamics unrelated to often inconsistent lockdown measures that were being implemented.”
17. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768086

“restrictions imposed by the pandemic (eg, stay-at-home orders) could claim lives indirectly through delayed care for acute emergencies, exacerbations of chronic diseases, and psychological distress (eg, drug overdoses).”

“In 14 states, more than 50%
of excess deaths were attributed to underlying causes other than COVID-19; these included California (55% of excess deaths) and Texas (64% of excess deaths)"
18. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.09.20210146v3

“We found that 180-day of mandatory isolations to healthy <60 (ie schools and workplaces closed) produces more final deaths if the vaccination date is later than (Madrid: Feb 23 2021; Catalonia: Dec 28 2020; Paris: Jan 14 2021; London: Jan 22 2021)”
19. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665588

“Comparing weekly mortality in 24 European countries, the findings in this paper suggest that more severe lockdown policies have not been associated with lower mortality. In other words, the lockdowns have not worked as intended”
20. https://www.nber.org/papers/w27719 

“Our findings … further raise doubt about the importance in NPI’s (lockdown policies in particular) in accounting for the evolution of COVID-19 transmission rates over time and across locations”
21. https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3543

“[the] President...has flatly denied the seriousness of the pandemic, refusing to impose a lockdown, close schools, or cancel mass events…Yet the country’s death rate is among the lowest in Europe-just over 700 in a population of 9.5 million”
23. https://pandata.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Exploring-inter-country-variation.pdf

“Consistent with observations that .. lockdown has not been observed to effect the rate...of the country reproduction rates significantly, our analysis suggests there is no basis for expecting lockdown stringency to be an explanatory variable”
25. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2029717

“recruits were under the constant supervision of Marine Corps instructors. Other settings in which young adults congregate are unlikely to reflect similar adherence to measures intended to reduce transmission."
support), and environment (temperature, ultra-violet index). Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate”
28. http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resources/publications/2006/2006-09-15-diseasemitigationcontrolpandemicflu.html
“There are no historical observations...that support.. confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods...The negative consequences...are so extreme…this mitigation..should be eliminated from serious consideration”
There are of course anecdotal observations as well--e.g., Florida is doing better than California despite DisneyWorld having been open for months and California having no current plan to ever reopen anything, let alone Disneyland.

I could do a similar thread on the harms of
lockdowns (and school closures in particular) but that seems unnecessary as such harms have been well documented. If lockdowns were extremely effective, their desirability from a policy perspective would at least be a conversation worth having. However, these papers suggest they
31. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84092-1
"After preprocessing the data, 87 regions around the world were included, yielding 3741 pairwise comparisons for linear regression analysis...we were not able to explain if COVID-19 mortality is reduced by staying at home in ~ 98% of the comparisons”
32. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3025-y
"Sweden is worthy of particular attention, given...no lockdown took place.” “Notably, the estimated effectiveness of…[merely a]…public events ban in Sweden is comparable to that of lockdown in the 10 countries in which one was implemented”
33. http://ssbhalla.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Lockdowns-Closures-vs.-COVID19-Covid-Wins-Nov-4.pdf
"For the first time in human history, lockdowns were used as a strategy to counter the virus. While conventional wisdom, to date, has been that lockdowns were successful…we find not one piece of evidence supporting this claim.”
34. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3764553
"on average, mandated behavioral changes accounts for only 9% (median: 0%) of the total effect on the growth of the pandemic stemming from behavioral changes. The remaining 91% (median: 100%) of the effect was due to voluntary behavioral changes”
35. https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/11/2/e042034.full.pdf
"Potential determinants assessed were…the stringency index, as a measure of country-level response to COVID-19”
Results? Shotgun blast (zero correlation):
38. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0
"measures can substitute for a full lockdown in terms of effectiveness, while reducing adverse impacts on society, the economy, [humanity]” “Less disruptive & costly NPIs can be as effective as more intrusive, drastic, ones (eg, a national lockdown).”
39. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.14.20175240v1.full.pdf
"The peculiar aspect of the claim that lockdown accounts for 81% of the reduction in R is that Sweden did not implement any lockdown, but still see a similar decrease in R as the other countries”
40. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.26.20140814v2.full.pdf
"It is evident...that the growth of a COVID19 epidemic does not follow an exponential growth law even in the very first days, but instead its growth is slowing down exponentially with time...it is decelerating from the first day"
41. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20198796v1.full.pdf
"Japan took the atypical step of not instituting a mandatory lockdown. During this time, businesses, restaurants, & transportation were kept open, & public life continued relatively unabated. Nevertheless, the second wave peaked and subsided on its own”
42. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.02.21252734v1.full.pdf
"We found no evidence that the shielding program [extreme lockdown] per se reduced COVID rates” “The effectiveness of shielding vulnerable individuals was limited by the inability to control transmission in hospital & from other adults in the household”
46. https://www.pnas.org/content/118/15/e2019706118
"Shelter-in-place [SIP] orders had no detectable health benefits, [&] only modest effects on behavior"
"We reanalyze 2 prior studies purporting...that SIP orders caused large reductions in disease prevalence & show that those results are not reliable."
48. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3784709"life loss due to lockdowns themselves has never been taken into consideration"
"pro-lockdown evidence is shockingly thin & based largely on comparing real-world outcomes against dire computer-generated forecasts derived from empirically untested models"
49. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.03.21251112v2.full.pdf
"All regions have peak incidence prior to the first lockdown with total incidence for England in decline well before lockdown"
"Furthermore all regions have R < 1 by either lockdown, with average R < 1 some days before either lockdown"
50. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3706464 "social isolation at a given date showed a strong positive correlation to COVID-19 deaths 39 days later"
"strong empirical evidence that..adoption of restrictive measures increasing social isolation have worsened the pandemic..instead of mitigating it"
51. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3782395
"Lockdowns are associated with reduced mortality in ...modelling studies but NOT in studies based on empirical data"

"deaths associated with economic harms or underfunding of other health issues may outweigh the deaths that lockdowns save"
52. http://www.sfu.ca/~allen/LockdownReport.pdf
"most of the early [lockdown] cost/benefit studies arrived at conclusions that were refuted later by data"

"cumulative deaths per million, & the pattern of daily deaths per million, is not negatively correlated with the stringency of lockdown"
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