Are lockdowns justified?

[HappySkeptic]

LOL. The paper you cited actually says you are wrong. Reading fail for you.

The fact, cited by many anti-lockdown papers, as well as this pro-lockdown paper, is that the strigency of the lockdown was, at the beginning of the pandemic in Europe, correlated positively with COVID-19 cases per capita, as well as deaths per capita. And the same seems to be true (though I haven't done a precise statistical analysis on that, nor have I seen anybody doing that) in the USA now, as the COVID-19 cases are falling in Texas, but they are rising in many USA states with mask mandates and lockdowns. The fact that there are such correlations severely undermines the notion that lockdowns are effective.
And the computer models that were used to argue for lockdowns are wrong, because, first of all, most of them do not model nursing home transmissions at all. Read this, it might change the way you see the world: https://www.aier.org/article/the-failure...n-we-knew/

The article exhibits a flaw in logic.  It ignores evidence that proves lockdowns work, and points to an unknown data point. 

Yup, someone incorrectly modeled the rate of COVID spread in pre-lockdown Sweden.  The authors attributed the gap to voluntary behavioral change (though this article dismisses that, because it doesn't back up his point of view).  Of course, the authors may have just messed up their model.

This is what happens when people listen to their favorite news source, instead of people who actually study this stuff.  One can always find an outlier data point that backs up your preconceptions, and social media and political media are more than happy to feed it to you.

[The Architect Of Fate]

American Institute for Economic Research is a bullshit wingnut website that's been pushing Covid misinformation and quackery since the start of the pandemic.

[FlatAssembler]

The fact, cited by many anti-lockdown papers, as well as this pro-lockdown paper, is that the strigency of the lockdown was, at the beginning of the pandemic in Europe, correlated positively with COVID-19 cases per capita, as well as deaths per capita. And the same seems to be true (though I haven't done a precise statistical analysis on that, nor have I seen anybody doing that) in the USA now, as the COVID-19 cases are falling in Texas, but they are rising in many USA states with mask mandates and lockdowns. The fact that there are such correlations severely undermines the notion that lockdowns are effective.
And the computer models that were used to argue for lockdowns are wrong, because, first of all, most of them do not model nursing home transmissions at all. Read this, it might change the way you see the world: https://www.aier.org/article/the-failure...n-we-knew/

The article exhibits a flaw in logic.  It ignores evidence that proves lockdowns work, and points to an unknown data point. 

Yup, someone incorrectly modeled the rate of COVID spread in pre-lockdown Sweden.  The authors attributed the gap to voluntary behavioral change (though this article dismisses that, because it doesn't back up his point of view).  Of course, the authors may have just messed up their model.

This is what happens when people listen to their favorite news source, instead of people who actually study this stuff.  One can always find an outlier data point that backs up your preconceptions, and social media and political media are more than happy to feed it to you.

That model (on which the famous claim that 3 million lives have been saved by lockdowns here in Europe) did not just incorrectly model the spread of COVID in pre-lockdown Sweden, it drastically overestimated deaths that will be caused by COVID in every single country. Be it with a lockdown or without a lockdown. Only for the USA did that model at least get the order of magnitude right. For most countries, it was 10 or more times off.

[The Grand Nudger]

Do you think that might suggest that something very strangely went wrong in the us? What do you imagine that might have been?

[HappySkeptic]

That model (on which the famous claim that 3 million lives have been saved by lockdowns here in Europe) did not just incorrectly model the spread of COVID in pre-lockdown Sweden, it drastically overestimated deaths that will be caused by COVID in every single country. Be it with a lockdown or without a lockdown. Only for the USA did that model at least get the order of magnitude right. For most countries, it was 10 or more times off.

I remember the modelling debate earlier last year.  There was no problem with the models.  They gave envelopes based on behavioral change.  The worst-case outcomes were based on no behavioral or government change.  Obviously that is never going to happen.  People don't just do the same things during a pandemic, lockdown or not.  The creators of the models said that people were misconstruing their models.

Of course, some of the knowledge of COVID has improved, and modelling has become more accurate.  We are in a 3rd wave in our country, and the worst-case modelling based on moderate restrictions was getting toward India-like levels.  Obviously, those aren't going to happen, because of new restrictions, and the population (at least the reasonable part of it) understanding what is going on.

[FlatAssembler]

Do you think that might suggest that something very strangely went wrong in the us? What do you imagine that might have been?

Well, the US is the highest in the world in type-2-diabetes, which makes COVID-19 much worse. And it is among the highest in the world in heart disease, which, again, makes COVID-19 worse. There were also massive protests during the pandemic. You know, the Black Lives Matter, the Capitol Riots... Those result in spreading COVID-19. Presumably more so than stores or restaurants do. The nursing home scandal also played some role, but not a lot. It is a combination of factors.

[arewethereyet]

Do you think that might suggest that something very strangely went wrong in the us?  What do you imagine that might have been?

Well, the US is the highest in the world in type-2-diabetes, which makes COVID-19 much worse. And it is among the highest in the world in heart disease, which, again, makes COVID-19 worse. There were also massive protests during the pandemic. You know, the Black Lives Matter, the Capitol Riots... Those result in spreading COVID-19. Presumably more so than stores or restaurants do. The nursing home scandal also played some role, but not a lot. It is a combination of factors.

Wrong again - 

Diabetes Rates by Country 2021 (worldpopulationreview.com)

Countries with the highest diabetes prevalence:

1. Marshall Islands (30.5%)
   
   
2. Kiribati (22.5%)
   
   
3. Tuvalu (22.1%)
   
   
4. Sudan (22.1%)
   
   
5. Mauritius (22.0%)
   
   
6. New Caledonia (21.8%)
   
   
7. Pakistan (19.9%)
   
   
8. French Polynesia (19.5%)
   
   
9. Solomon Islands (19.0%)
   
   
10. Guam (18.7%)
    

[arewethereyet]

And....wrong again....

Heart Disease Rates by Country - WorldAtlas

The US isn't in the top 10.

You came up with a stance and can't prove it.

[FlatAssembler]

That model (on which the famous claim that 3 million lives have been saved by lockdowns here in Europe) did not just incorrectly model the spread of COVID in pre-lockdown Sweden, it drastically overestimated deaths that will be caused by COVID in every single country. Be it with a lockdown or without a lockdown. Only for the USA did that model at least get the order of magnitude right. For most countries, it was 10 or more times off.

I remember the modelling debate earlier last year.  There was no problem with the models.  They gave envelopes based on behavioral change.  The worst-case outcomes were based on no behavioral or government change.  Obviously that is never going to happen.  People don't just do the same things during a pandemic, lockdown or not.  The creators of the models said that people were misconstruing their models.

Of course, some of the knowledge of COVID has improved, and modelling has become more accurate.  We are in a 3rd wave in our country, and the worst-case modelling based on moderate restrictions was getting toward India-like levels.  Obviously, those aren't going to happen, because of new restrictions, and the population (at least the reasonable part of it) understanding what is going on.

The problem is that that model drastically overestimates COVID mortality both without a lockdown and with a lockdown. The truth is obvious: it was not 3.2 million people that were saved by lockdowns. And the model that predicted that is, if not entirely wrong, incredibly simplistic. It literally assumes asymptomatic individuals are as likely to spread COVID as those who have symptoms. A similar model, but which corrects for that, predicts that around 262 thousand people were saved by lockdowns in Europe: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/...20202267v1
That's how it is with computer models in social sciences. In my study about the names of places in Croatia as well: computer models are very susceptible to variables which cannot be precisely known. If you assume the entropy of the pairs of consonants in Croatian is 7.839 (as the raw measurements suggested), the p-value of the patterns I have found is 1/500. If you do some reasonable corrections to the results of those measurements, and you assume the entropy is 5.992, then the p-value becomes 1/17. The computer models in social sciences give results no better than guessing.

---

Well, the US is the highest in the world in type-2-diabetes, which makes COVID-19 much worse. And it is among the highest in the world in heart disease, which, again, makes COVID-19 worse. There were also massive protests during the pandemic. You know, the Black Lives Matter, the Capitol Riots... Those result in spreading COVID-19. Presumably more so than stores or restaurants do. The nursing home scandal also played some role, but not a lot. It is a combination of factors.

Wrong again - 

Diabetes Rates by Country 2021 (worldpopulationreview.com)

Countries with the highest diabetes prevalence:

1. Marshall Islands (30.5%)
   
   
2. Kiribati (22.5%)
   
   
3. Tuvalu (22.1%)
   
   
4. Sudan (22.1%)
   
   
5. Mauritius (22.0%)
   
   
6. New Caledonia (21.8%)
   
   
7. Pakistan (19.9%)
   
   
8. French Polynesia (19.5%)
   
   
9. Solomon Islands (19.0%)
   
   
10. Guam (18.7%)
    

I must admit I haven't even heard of most of those countries. How well are they dealing with COVID?

[FlatAssembler]

So, @arewethereyet , what do you think is the reason the US did so poorly fighting against COVID? The US government did way more than the Swedish government did, yet the US has been doing worse than Sweden.