Experts are starting to crunch the data, and although it's limited, it's pointing in the direction that a number of disease policy experts originally warned against: lockdowns don't prevent the spread of a highly contagious respiratory illness, but do cause many other problems.
It will be interesting to see the data from only the US in comparing different states, and the effectiveness of more specific measures like mandatory masks.
I'd summarizes the paper as follows:
Yes, you can implement policy to force people to change their actions in response to a pandemic. But rarely does this policy have more of an effect than the natural changes people make in response to risk perception.
In addition, some changes that people make might be worse than nothing at all, e.g. closing bars and other social settings pushing people to gather in homes with people who might not be at bars.
This new social dynamics results in a setting which is closer, more enclosed, and for longer periods of time. The Chicago mayor is already making this conclusion, noting that closing bars might be WORSE as this pushes humans (social creatures) into other social settings that cannot be controlled.
On to the actual paper!
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13484
It will be interesting to see the data from only the US in comparing different states, and the effectiveness of more specific measures like mandatory masks.
I'd summarizes the paper as follows:
Yes, you can implement policy to force people to change their actions in response to a pandemic. But rarely does this policy have more of an effect than the natural changes people make in response to risk perception.
In addition, some changes that people make might be worse than nothing at all, e.g. closing bars and other social settings pushing people to gather in homes with people who might not be at bars.
This new social dynamics results in a setting which is closer, more enclosed, and for longer periods of time. The Chicago mayor is already making this conclusion, noting that closing bars might be WORSE as this pushes humans (social creatures) into other social settings that cannot be controlled.
On to the actual paper!
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13484
Quote:
Empirical data for the characteristics of fatalities in the later wave before mrNPIs were adopted as compared with the first wave (when mrNPIs had been used) shows that the proportion of COVID-19 deaths that occurred in nursing homes was often higher under mrNPIs rather than under less restrictive measures. This further suggest that restrictive measures do not clearly achieve protection of vulnerable populations. Some evidence also suggests that sometimes under more restrictive measures, infections may be more frequent in settings where vulnerable populations reside relative to the general population.
In summary, we fail to find strong evidence supporting a role for more restrictive NPIs in the control of COVID in early 2020. We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures. The data cannot fully exclude the possibility of some benefits. However, even if they exist, these benefits may not match the numerous harms of these aggressive measures. More targeted public health interventions that more effectively reduce transmissions may be important for future epidemic control without the harms of highly restrictive measures