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Did lockdowns help or hinder?

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
redsturgeon
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Did lockdowns help or hinder?

#493536

Postby redsturgeon » April 11th, 2022, 11:13 am

https://theconversation.com/did-the-cov ... 1648059743

Should the world face another new pandemic disease, there are three lessons to keep in mind. Firstly, applying protective measures as early and hard as possible consistently led to better outcomes. Less stringent interventions risked increasing deaths; more severe responses lowered fatalities.

Plus, unless it’s possible to eliminate the virus in a region, measures will need to continue. This requires public acceptance and economic support, particularly in areas of high deprivation.

And finally, for the greatest effect, different restrictions must be combined, including voluntary responses – such as social distancing – and test and trace. There’s no single silver bullet. Some measures might need maintaining, even after, for example, introducing vaccines.

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Re: Did lockdowns help or hinder?

#493538

Postby pje16 » April 11th, 2022, 11:21 am

Without it the Delta variant would have spread much faster
just look at quickly omicron spread now that it's "back to work and no masks"
luckily it has proved to be not so dangerous

Also without the lockdown the technlogy in my firm would not have advanced so quickly
EVERYONE now uses Teams and we have kiseed goodbye to phones on our desks
and we can still work at home for the majority of the week if we want to, no questions asked

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Re: Did lockdowns help or hinder?

#493604

Postby dealtn » April 11th, 2022, 6:12 pm

redsturgeon wrote:https://theconversation.com/did-the-covid-lockdowns-work-heres-what-we-know-two-years-on-176623?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1648059743

Should the world face another new pandemic disease, there are three lessons to keep in mind. Firstly, applying protective measures as early and hard as possible consistently led to better outcomes. Less stringent interventions risked increasing deaths; more severe responses lowered fatalities.

Plus, unless it’s possible to eliminate the virus in a region, measures will need to continue. This requires public acceptance and economic support, particularly in areas of high deprivation.

And finally, for the greatest effect, different restrictions must be combined, including voluntary responses – such as social distancing – and test and trace. There’s no single silver bullet. Some measures might need maintaining, even after, for example, introducing vaccines.


Any reason you left off the final paragraph of the conclusion?

The 2020 lockdowns demonstrated that societies are willing and capable of supporting drastic disease-control measures if they see the need. But, full – and particularly repeated – lockdowns can be seen as a failure of other, more gradual public health policies. A lockdown should be seen as an efficient but also very blunt public health tool, to be used in necessity but as part of a wider strategy.

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Re: Did lockdowns help or hinder?

#493613

Postby Lootman » April 11th, 2022, 7:38 pm

redsturgeon wrote:
Should the world face another new pandemic disease, there are three lessons to keep in mind. Firstly, applying protective measures as early and hard as possible consistently led to better outcomes. Less stringent interventions risked increasing deaths; more severe responses lowered fatalities.

Based on that extract alone (not having read the underlying article) my response would be that they are equating "better outcomes" with "lowered fatalities".

Whilst that is a natural metric to use, I do not believe that there has ever been consensus that it is the only metric, or even necessarily the most important one. Without an agreed consensus on what a "better outcome" is then such articles will themselves struggle to establish consensus.

And I could be wrong here but I rather get the impression that the author is presuming that there is one "perfect" response out there. Isn't it at least possible that the perfect response actually varies by location, demographics, social cohesion, economic, cultural and biological differences and so on?

The idea that Bangladesh, Belgium, Botswana and Belize should all do the exact same thing doesn't ring true, for me anyway.

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Re: Did lockdowns help or hinder?

#493626

Postby redsturgeon » April 11th, 2022, 8:33 pm

dealtn wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:https://theconversation.com/did-the-covid-lockdowns-work-heres-what-we-know-two-years-on-176623?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1648059743

Should the world face another new pandemic disease, there are three lessons to keep in mind. Firstly, applying protective measures as early and hard as possible consistently led to better outcomes. Less stringent interventions risked increasing deaths; more severe responses lowered fatalities.

Plus, unless it’s possible to eliminate the virus in a region, measures will need to continue. This requires public acceptance and economic support, particularly in areas of high deprivation.

And finally, for the greatest effect, different restrictions must be combined, including voluntary responses – such as social distancing – and test and trace. There’s no single silver bullet. Some measures might need maintaining, even after, for example, introducing vaccines.


Any reason you left off the final paragraph of the conclusion?

The 2020 lockdowns demonstrated that societies are willing and capable of supporting drastic disease-control measures if they see the need. But, full – and particularly repeated – lockdowns can be seen as a failure of other, more gradual public health policies. A lockdown should be seen as an efficient but also very blunt public health tool, to be used in necessity but as part of a wider strategy.


None at all, I hoped that anyone interested would read the whole of this article for themselves and come to their own conclusions as to its validity. Just quoted the "three lessons" as a taster. I agree totally with the final paragraph, don't you?

John

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Re: Did lockdowns help or hinder?

#493627

Postby dealtn » April 11th, 2022, 8:40 pm

redsturgeon wrote:
dealtn wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:https://theconversation.com/did-the-covid-lockdowns-work-heres-what-we-know-two-years-on-176623?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1648059743

Should the world face another new pandemic disease, there are three lessons to keep in mind. Firstly, applying protective measures as early and hard as possible consistently led to better outcomes. Less stringent interventions risked increasing deaths; more severe responses lowered fatalities.

Plus, unless it’s possible to eliminate the virus in a region, measures will need to continue. This requires public acceptance and economic support, particularly in areas of high deprivation.

And finally, for the greatest effect, different restrictions must be combined, including voluntary responses – such as social distancing – and test and trace. There’s no single silver bullet. Some measures might need maintaining, even after, for example, introducing vaccines.


Any reason you left off the final paragraph of the conclusion?

The 2020 lockdowns demonstrated that societies are willing and capable of supporting drastic disease-control measures if they see the need. But, full – and particularly repeated – lockdowns can be seen as a failure of other, more gradual public health policies. A lockdown should be seen as an efficient but also very blunt public health tool, to be used in necessity but as part of a wider strategy.


None at all, I hoped that anyone interested would read the whole of this article for themselves and come to their own conclusions as to its validity. Just quoted the "three lessons" as a taster. I agree totally with the final paragraph, don't you?

John


Yes I agree.

Just seemed odd when the conclusion, which was only 3 paragraphs, got abbreviated by omitting the last of those, being the only one that wasn't entirely supportive of the use of lockdowns.

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Re: Did lockdowns help or hinder?

#493641

Postby Dod101 » April 11th, 2022, 11:22 pm

I have just got hold of a very recent book 'The Year the World Went Mad' by a Scottish epidemiologist, Mark Woolhouse. He is definitely against lockdowns, maintaining that all they do is postpone the reckoning, but I have not got far enough into the book to say any more.

Dod

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Re: Did lockdowns help or hinder?

#493658

Postby redsturgeon » April 12th, 2022, 6:23 am

Dod101 wrote:I have just got hold of a very recent book 'The Year the World Went Mad' by a Scottish epidemiologist, Mark Woolhouse. He is definitely against lockdowns, maintaining that all they do is postpone the reckoning, but I have not got far enough into the book to say any more.

Dod


The original idea behind the lockdowns was to ensure that the health services were not overloaded. This was in the days when we had no vaccine protection or natural immunity against this novel virus and few if any effective anti viral treatments. Many patients needed ventilation and we had a shortage of ventilators. Early lockdowns were essential to save lives. The evidence from those early days is quite plain, most scientists suggest that tens of thousand of lives might have been saved here if we had locked down earlier and in fact we might also have been able to shorten the length of the original lockdown.

Once vaccines had been developed and approved (in record time remember) and health services became more skilled at treating cases, with the help of drugs like dexamethasone plus new antivirals then the case for strict lockdowns was lessened but during the Delta surge again it seemed prudent to protect our health services.

With the rise of Omicron which is many times more infectious that the original strain then it is questionable whether any but the most stringent lockdowns (as shown in Shanghai currently) can stop the virus. The news coming from that city shows how those measures are above anything that was ever suggested or tried here thankfully.

John

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Re: Did lockdowns help or hinder?

#493665

Postby 9873210 » April 12th, 2022, 7:20 am

redsturgeon wrote:Many patients needed ventilation and we had a shortage of ventilators.


It turned out that ventilators were less useful than was thought at the time. There was significant improvement in case management and reduction in mortality during the first six months, long before vaccines and antivirals came on the scene.

Delay is useful if you use the time to learn and prepare.

While the numbers from Australia, South Korea and New Zealand are not yet final it is very likely that they will have significantly lower total death rates, they did not merely delay the inevitable.

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Re: Did lockdowns help or hinder?

#493669

Postby Dod101 » April 12th, 2022, 8:16 am

redsturgeon wrote:
Dod101 wrote:I have just got hold of a very recent book 'The Year the World Went Mad' by a Scottish epidemiologist, Mark Woolhouse. He is definitely against lockdowns, maintaining that all they do is postpone the reckoning, but I have not got far enough into the book to say any more.

Dod


The original idea behind the lockdowns was to ensure that the health services were not overloaded. This was in the days when we had no vaccine protection or natural immunity against this novel virus and few if any effective anti viral treatments. Many patients needed ventilation and we had a shortage of ventilators. Early lockdowns were essential to save lives. The evidence from those early days is quite plain, most scientists suggest that tens of thousand of lives might have been saved here if we had locked down earlier and in fact we might also have been able to shorten the length of the original lockdown.

Once vaccines had been developed and approved (in record time remember) and health services became more skilled at treating cases, with the help of drugs like dexamethasone plus new antivirals then the case for strict lockdowns was lessened but during the Delta surge again it seemed prudent to protect our health services.

With the rise of Omicron which is many times more infectious that the original strain then it is questionable whether any but the most stringent lockdowns (as shown in Shanghai currently) can stop the virus. The news coming from that city shows how those measures are above anything that was ever suggested or tried here thankfully.

John


Yes. I appreciate all that (even before I read the book) I will report back on tie author's views.

Dod

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Re: Did lockdowns help or hinder?

#493697

Postby harris1939 » April 12th, 2022, 10:18 am

".........While the numbers from Australia, South Korea and New Zealand are not yet final it is very likely that they will have significantly lower total death rates, they did not merely delay the inevitable....."

Cherry picked evidence is not proof of the usefulness of lockdowns. Particularly when 20, 30 or more times that number of other different countries tried lockdown and it was a total disaster. Millions more people would have died without lockdown? No evidence of that at all of course except that lockdown supporters say it.

I await the reply "oh but they were the only countries to implement a proper lockdown". Whatever a "proper lockdown" is. China perhaps?

Imran Khan, no longer prime minister of Pakistan advised his country to live with the virus from as early as June 2020. And here below is an extract from a BBC article from 2 days ago (assuming anything that the BBC writes is to be believed) stating the following:

"He cut an impressive figure on the world stage and his decision not to order a complete lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic was vindicated by fewer than expected deaths - though no-one can still be exactly sure why."

No one can be sure why Pakistan had fewer than expected deaths unless one concludes that lockdowns, at least for Pakistan, were a terrible idea. He did ask his people to "behave sensibly" but refused to implement lockdown. Rightly so IMHO. Oh, but Pakistan is a younger population etc etc blah de blah. Anything to prove lockdowns do work. Unfortunately there were very few countries that flat refused to implement them so I can only cherry pick Pakistan.

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Re: Did lockdowns help or hinder?

#493714

Postby servodude » April 12th, 2022, 11:58 am

9873210 wrote:
redsturgeon wrote:Many patients needed ventilation and we had a shortage of ventilators.


It turned out that ventilators were less useful than was thought at the time. There was significant improvement in case management and reduction in mortality during the first six months, long before vaccines and antivirals came on the scene.

Delay is useful if you use the time to learn and prepare.

While the numbers from Australia, South Korea and New Zealand are not yet final it is very likely that they will have significantly lower total death rates, they did not merely delay the inevitable.


Indeed!

Intubation was/is only ever really a last resort (the induced coma compounding the issues when the body hasn't got the resources to fight)... it did buy some patients time, but saved noticeably fewer than most respiratory patients.

NIV very quickly become the preferred "ventilation" (luckily because it's far cheaper and easier) and we can probably view that as part of the "case management" that, as pointed out, has helped immensely.

It's patently possible to choose to act quickly and effectively to ameliorate and suppress this kind of transmissive pathogen
- and the issue I take with the retrofitting of the "there's hee haw we can do" mantra is that it will screw up the effective response next time

-sd

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Re: Did lockdowns help or hinder?

#493730

Postby Dod101 » April 12th, 2022, 1:47 pm

What has not been addressed in the original article is the economic and social cost of lockdowns. Children's education, mental health of many and so on.

Mark Woolhouse, the epidemiologist that I mentioned earlier tells us in his book that public health officials are very risk averse, but then I guess we knew that already. Interesting though that he mentions how little was done to specifically protect the vulnerable, both in care homes and in the wider community during the lockdown stages. Lockdown is a very blunt instrument. Then of course once we had a vaccine, all of that changed and protecting the vulnerable became the priority. He argues that if that had been the policy much earlier we could probably have avoided a lot of the problems in the early stages.

Dod


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