At this stage of the pandemic, you really can’t get away with sweeping, unqualified claims about the virtues of lockdown – there’s just too much evidence in the other direction. So the LA Times discovered last week.
Sweden saw particularly low mortality in 2019, which may partly explain why its mortality rate rose in 2020. Taking the average of 2019 and 2020, Sweden had lower mortality than both Denmark and Finland.
On 15 March last year, Matt Hancock said, "We have a plan ... Herd immunity is not part of it." Now Dominic Cummings claims that "herd immunity by Sep" was "literally the official plan in all docs/graphs/meetings".
The age-standardised mortality rate in April was the lowest on record for that month. If the rate remains low for the next few months, it will "cancel out" most of the excess mortality observed in the second wave.
Dominic Cummings has written a pro-lockdown Twitter thread, but it isn't very convincing. Here's a point-by-point response.
The Wikipedia page for "COVID-19 misinformation" says the lab leak theory is based on “unfounded speculation and conspiracy theories”. Yet experts are now calling for a new investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
Men in service and elementary occupations were more likely to die of COVID-19 than those in professional and managerial occupations. This may be because lockdown shifted the burden of COVID-19 onto the working class.
The “externality argument” for lockdown says that government should restrict our freedoms to prevent us from harming others. In a recent paper, two economists explain why this argument isn't as strong as it seems.
MIT researchers analysed a large sample of pandemic-related tweets, and used ethnographic methods to study "anti-mask" Facebook groups. They found that sceptics place a premium on data literacy and scientific rigour.
Lockdowns do not explain why Denmark, Norway and Finland have had fewer deaths than Sweden. Border controls were the crucial factor during the first wave. And Sweden had more restrictions than Finland during the second.
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