Are lockdowns justified?

[FlatAssembler]

They do succeed at reducing the spread as shown in the linked studies.

And, as I am sure you know, there are countless similar studies failing to find any effect of lockdowns: https://www.aier.org/article/lockdowns-d...-evidence/
And even the study you cited says that, in Europe, lockdowns do not show a significant effect: Here [in Europe] Lockdown is positive, suggesting that countries that implemented the lockdown have, on average, more New Cases than in countries that did not.. And considering all those people who, at the beginning of the lockdown, rushed into grocery stores and buying unreasonable amounts of bottled water and toilet paper (contributing to the initial spread of the pandemic), and all those protests that probably would not be there if there were no lockdowns... I don't know why that would be surprising. And even if lockdowns do work, it is to "flatten the curve" not to overwhelm the hospitals, they are effective for a short period of time. See what the study you cited says: we detect an increase in benefits and a reduction in contagion even 20 days after the start of lockdown.. That is it, 20 days of lockdown. Not shutting down most businesses for almost a year, as the governments have been doing.

When you say "they definitely do not have a huge effect", your not only making unsubstantiated claims, you're ignoring the term "significant."

When you say "significant", you mean "there will be a few times more deaths if it were not for the lockdowns", right? Well, that is implausible given that there have been many studies finding no effect.

I show they do.

No, you did not.

I, for one, spent just as much if not more time outside over the past year. As did many more.

So, why do you think there are so few cases of COVID during the summer?

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According to the CDC, 2017 totaled 2,813,503.  2020 totaled 3,358,814, 377,833 of which were due to covid.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/m..._x#F1_down

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr6...06-508.pdf

OK, I will look into it more. I remember seing some chart comparing how many people died each week in years 2017-2020. The year 2017 had a vastly above average mortality in the first half of the year. The year 2020 had an even bigger, but not much bigger, mortality in the second half of the year. Seems to me that different sources give you very different estimates.