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by swsieber
1522 days ago
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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. [0] https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/lockdowns-during-early-pandemic-... [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... |
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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.