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0 pointsesperent5y ago0 comments

There's a big difference here though - when it comes to a vaccine, we have hard stats to define the risk/reward ratio.

I believe it's likely that lockdowns may cause some deaths, or possibly even lots of deaths. However, they certainly help prevent the spread of deadly disease too and hence prevent many deaths. We can probably get fairly definite numbers on how many deaths lockdown prevents in a large population. I don't think we can get similar numbers on how many they cause. My gut says they probably prevent a lot more than they cause, but I'd like to see any studies on this, if anyone has a link to share.

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donovanian5y ago

> What are you basing your claim about lockdown causing death on?

It's pretty obvious there's a profound psychological, developmental (children), and economic toll of lockdowns.

For anyone that's below 60 or so, it's very clear they've got net negative effects on their life from draconian across the board measures that go on this long.

edit: wow immediately flagged? Is it verboten to mention the simple fact of economic trade-offs in any decision we make?

I'm not even saying that lockdowns are bad, I'm saying that they have profound consequences that can't be brushed away or ignored.

The fact that so many are reticent to even admit that is why I think it's so important to mention it.

mikem1705y ago

I agree with you. There is a lot of fear around this topic, so I assume rather than engage with on the merits people may be downvoting you in defence of their emotions.

devthane5y ago

It probably depends where you are located. There are some less developed countries countries that jumped the gun on hard lockdowns without any sort of care infrastructure I which people have died due to inability to get food or care for births.

For a source https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/...

I don’t attempt to extend that to more developed countries however. And I can’t say they things wouldn’t be worse if they hadn’t locked down, but according to a family I know in Uganda, they were locked down before they had even one case. I haven’t done the research on whether that is true or not so take it or leave it.

isolli5y ago

Fair question. In a sense, the evidence for vaccines is upfront, while the evidence for lockdowns required the careful accumulation of data. I would cite for instance the paper by Ioannidis and co-authors [0].

"In summary, we fail to find strong evidence supporting a role for more restrictive NPIs in the control of COVID in early 2020. We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures.

The data cannot fully exclude the possibility of some benefits. However, even if they exist, these benefits may not match the numerous harms of these aggressive measures. More targeted public health interventions that more effectively reduce transmissions may be important for future epidemic control without the harms of highly restrictive measures."

[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484

5cents5y ago

It may not affect your main point, but a caution: The paper has received critique [1], including a letter to the editor

[1] https://pubpeer.com/publications/3D81CAC483C2021C00E27C8826D...

[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13518

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