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from the lockdowns-were-supposed-to-be-just-one-part-of-defense-at-depth dept.
Economists warn of 'widespread costs' from lockdown:
Blanket restrictions on economic activity should be lifted and replaced with measures targeted specifically at groups most at risk, say economists.
[...] They argue that while the extent to which the lockdown contributed to a subsequent slowing in the rate of new infections and deaths is not easy to estimate precisely, it seems clear that it did contribute to these public health objectives.
However, they say it is "very far from clear" whether keeping such tight restrictions in place for three months until the end of June when they began to be lifted was warranted, given the large costs. They say that the costs of carrying on with such a lockdown are likely to have become significantly greater than its benefits.
Debate over the global dilemma continues.
(Score: 5, Informative) by driverless on Thursday July 30 2020, @11:19AM (5 children)
And we even have real-world data on this, thoughtfully provided by the Kingdom of Sweden, who ran a don't-lock-down experiment for us. Result: Twenty times the death toll of their neighbours who did lock down, and no economic benefit compared to said neighbours.
I assume the economists who published this study are the same sort who are routinely outperformed in terms of making predictions by chickens pecking at corn in gridded boards and similar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @11:47AM
And then we have Latvia, with a reverse situation compared to neighbors. Now what?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/ [statista.com]
BTW, we have Belarus as well, while on the other end we have Belgium.
Cherry-picked data demonstrate things about you, not about the right way to respond to the virus (if indeed such a way can be deduced this early; observe the "second wave" rising presently in all those places that sat months in lockdown in the spring).
(Score: 3, Informative) by leon_the_cat on Thursday July 30 2020, @12:10PM (3 children)
Sweden is 4th worst in europe. The top 3 performed hard lockdowns.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Belgium#/media/File:COVID-19-EU-log-relative-deaths.svg [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @01:15PM
Sweden's death numbers are several times other nordic countries', those that are actually comparable to Sweden in terms of location/culture/size, unlike the other "top performers" that are much larger, hosts many more tourists/foreigners, etc.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @05:31PM
While true, Belgium's numbers are inflated compared to the others: they're the only country including suspected cases in their death toll. Most countries only report Covid deaths following a positive test, while Belgium (FAFAIK the only one) includes every death with Covid-like symptoms and every unexplained death from a population with a high number of confirmed cases in their figures, even without a positive test.
Eventually, the excess mortality figures will likely give a better picture of the real death toll than the current self-reporting. Just last week, The Netherlands reported that the excess mortality during March and April was 50% higher than the official Covid death toll. The Economist has a few graphs [economist.com] offsetting the official corona figures against the excess mortality rate, which suggests many countries are underreporting the actual death toll.
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday August 03 2020, @03:50AM
Another weird thing is generally the countries with the best healthcare faired the worse due to having more people ready to die, stroke survivors, heart attack survivors, cancer survivors etc. People who have already died due to lack of healthcare in other countries.