The prolific blogger Scott Alexander has written a long post about lockdowns. He claims that "Sweden comes out looking very bad". Yet Sweden saw age-adjusted excess mortality up to week 51 of just 1.7%.
The looting in South Africa was triggered by last week's arrest of Jacob Zuma. But it's worth considering whether lockdown is a factor too. South Africa's GDP fell 7% last year, and unemployment stands at 32.6%
The link between cases and deaths has weakened substantially in recent weeks. However, the situation is actually even more positive: measured by excess deaths, the pandemic hasn't taken any lives since early March.
Last February, The Lancet published a letter signed by 27 scientists calling the lab leak a "conspiracy theory". Now the Editor-in-Chief of The BMJ has said the lab leak is "plausible and worthy of serious inquiry".
Two economists have estimated that the world lost 48 million life-years due to people dying from COVID in 2020. "Every year", they note, "at least twice as many life years are lost due to children dying of diarrhea."
The authors of the Lancet letter from last February have penned a new letter for that journal. However, they mischaracterise the lab leak theory, and don't apologise for calling it a "conspiracy theory".
Estimates for the prevalence of long COVID range from 0.04% to 1.7%. Given all the evidence, those at the low end are more plausible, especially if we’re talking about something of clinical significance.
The case against lockdowns is simple: "benefits small, costs large". A data scientist has found that states with more stringent lockdowns haven’t had fewer COVID-19 deaths, but they have seen higher unemployment.
As a recent NYT article notes, nearly every case of SARS since the first outbreak has been due to lab leaks. There have been "six incidents in three countries, including twice in a single month from a lab in Beijing".
Infections are rising rapidly in Scotland, but have not translated into a large number of hospitalisations. The recent surge appears to be related to Euro 2020, with infections concentrated among men aged 15–44.
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