COVID-19/Efficacy of lockdown
This learning resource is about the efficacy of lockdowns. A lockdown has a massive impact on society and economy, unlike other epidemiological risk mitigation strategies like wearing mask and raising awareness of importance of protective measures (see Risk Literacy).
Review of Publication
The efficacy of lockdowns imposed by governments can be investigated. What can be investigated is the statistically measurable impact of lockdowns on relevant outcomes such as mortality rate.
Use the following resources with caution.
Further reading in mainstream media (use with double caution: mainstream media is generally unreliable on science):
- Williams, Sophie (3 January 2020). "How the plague taught us to fight coronavirus". BBC News.
- Levenson, Michael (2 January 2020). "Scale of China's Wuhan Shutdown Is Believed to Be Without Precedent". The New York Times.
- Rogers, Adam (22 January 2020). "Would the Coronavirus Quarantine of Wuhan Even Work?". Wired.
- Du, Lisa (24 January 2020). "China's Unproven Antiviral Solution: Quarantine of 40 Million". Bloomberg L.P.
- "As Coronavirus Fears Intensify, Effectiveness of Quarantines Is Questioned". The New York Times. 2 January 2020.
- Hamblin, James (2 January 2020). "A Historic Quarantine". The Atlantic.
- Jain, Vageesh (31 January 2020). "Coronavirus outbreak: quarantining millions in China is unprecedented and wrong". The Conversation.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - Did the COVID lockdowns work? Here’s what we know two years on, March 23, 2022, theconversation.com
Further reading for science, including pre-prints:
- Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic. by A. J. Meunier, May 1, medrxiv.org - non-peer-reviewed preprint of a study
- A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes, July 21, 2020, thelancet.com
- The above investigation included look at correlations of obesity, median population age, GDP, time to border closures from the first reported case, and more.
- A phenomenological approach to assessing the effectiveness of COVID-19 related nonpharmaceutical interventions in Germany by Thomas Wieland, 21 July 2020, sciencedirect.com
Further reading on media that neither scientific publication venue nor mainstream media, to be used with double caution:
- Lockdown Deaths, Not Covid Deaths by Iain Davis, July 14, ukcolumn.org
Other further reading:
- COVID-19 lockdowns, wikipedia.org - in particular W:COVID-19 lockdowns#Efficacy
- List of all peer-reviewed & published research articles that evaluate the effectiveness of nonpharmaceutical interventions, specifically lockdowns on COVID-19, mbevand at github.com - updated as late as 10 Apr 2022, featuring articles up to Mar 2022