[henrikschroder]

> This is almost impossible to quantify because we can't determine how the pandemic would have played out without lockdowns.

There is a wide spread of pandemic responses from different countries and regions, so yes, we can make pretty good guesses as to what the effect would have been.

All the various lockdown-supporting studies compare lockdowns to a do-nothing base scenario, where people are essentially assumed to be rolling around naked in a big heap, licking everything and everyone. This is completely false, because people everywhere acted on their own to protect themselves from spread.

And when you compare the effects of the decreased mobility due to ordered lockdowns vs. what people voluntarily achieve anyway, the effect is zero. No benefit, all harm.

[only_as_i_fall]

Isn't that decreased mobility largely impossible without lockdowns though? I can't imagine more than 20% of workers would realistically have been able to stay home if their employers didn't have to lock down.

[henrikschroder]

Absolutely not, because you could measure a substantial decrease in mobility before any region instituted a lockdown.

You can support working-from-home and furloughing without forcing it. And that's enough.

Last autumn in Sweden, cases started rising, still no lockdown, and people voluntarily decreased their mobility. Everyone I talked to decreased their social activity, skipped out on things, stayed home more. Without being told to. Without being ordered around. It's enough.

[only_as_i_fall]

>Absolutely not, because you could measure a substantial decrease in mobility before any region instituted a lockdown.

Source?

[henrikschroder]

https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/

[only_as_i_fall]

That isn't historical data

This is https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/changes-visitors-covid?ti...

Shows the trend becomes clear on March 12th, which is 7 days before the first lockdowns in New York. Are you suggesting that the one week delay when everyone bought out all the toilet paper because they thought the world was ending is evidence that the lockdowns weren't needed to affect mobility?