[thedorkknight]

That's not quite the right way of phrasing that question. Models are made with and without interventions taken into account, and the lockdowns were a reaction to models showing reduced deaths and hospital strain if lockdown measures were in place. I'm not sure what that guy is talking about.

But if you're actually interested, you should go and read the papers used for modeling yourself, since the odds of finding a rando on hacker news who is an actual epidemiologists is zilch. The ones who were public communicators that I followed over COVID were the podcast "This Week in Virology" which is just about the best resource you're going to find, and the blog "your local epidemiologist", who is also fantastic