Were the COVID-19 Lockdowns a Mistake? | Reason - Zach Weismuller:
May 8, 2020 - "So have the lockdowns actually saved lives? There's a debate over how to analyze the data.... Lyman Stone, an economist and demographer who's an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies ... argues that there's no correlation between the timing of statewide or regional shelter-in-place orders and a decline in the COVID-19 death rate....
"Stone looked at the date governments issued shelter-in-place orders compared to the total daily deaths 20 days later, the minimum amount of time medical experts believe it would take for initial exposure to the virus to lead to death. In every case, he found the decline came long before the 20-day threshold. Stone says voluntary social distancing is effective: Cell phone tracking data indicate that people were socially distancing before the shelter-in-place orders, and the orders had a negligible effect on the extent of that distancing. 'People were already socially distancing before the lockdown. Social distancing works,' says Stone.
"University of Colorado Denver economist Andrew I. Friedson disagrees. He co-authored a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research that says California's lockdown, the first in the nation, may have prevented more than 1,600 COVID deaths.... Friedson's model created a 'synthetic' version of California that never locked down by taking the weighted average of other states that didn't impose shelter-in-place orders.
"Stone says the model is less useful than looking at actual outcomes and argues that their findings don't support the use of shelter-in-place orders. 'They find that their shelter-in-place reduced deaths beginning four days after it was implemented, which means that you must assume that … a considerable share of COVID-19 cases die four days after infection,' says Stone. "The problem is that's not even long enough for the incubation time.'
"Friedson concedes that social distancing behavior increased before the lockdowns, but he argues that the lockdowns increased the magnitude of the effects by forcing noncompliant individuals to stay home more. 'What we're talking about with this lockdown is that we're putting some extra juice behind this,' says Friedson....
"Stone says that what likely flattened the curve was voluntary social distancing, prompted by information about the dangers of the virus, in conjunction with the closure of schools and large assemblies. Instead of shelter-in-place orders, he says the rest of the world should learn from the approach taken by Hong Kong, which never issued a stay-at-home order and has just four documented COVID-19 deaths. He says the city accomplished this by banning all travel from China early on, encouraging universal use of masks, and implementing mandatory, centralized quarantines of sick or exposed individuals."
Read more: https://reason.com/video/were-the-covid-19-lockdowns-a-mistake/
May 8, 2020 - "So have the lockdowns actually saved lives? There's a debate over how to analyze the data.... Lyman Stone, an economist and demographer who's an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies ... argues that there's no correlation between the timing of statewide or regional shelter-in-place orders and a decline in the COVID-19 death rate....
"Stone looked at the date governments issued shelter-in-place orders compared to the total daily deaths 20 days later, the minimum amount of time medical experts believe it would take for initial exposure to the virus to lead to death. In every case, he found the decline came long before the 20-day threshold. Stone says voluntary social distancing is effective: Cell phone tracking data indicate that people were socially distancing before the shelter-in-place orders, and the orders had a negligible effect on the extent of that distancing. 'People were already socially distancing before the lockdown. Social distancing works,' says Stone.
"University of Colorado Denver economist Andrew I. Friedson disagrees. He co-authored a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research that says California's lockdown, the first in the nation, may have prevented more than 1,600 COVID deaths.... Friedson's model created a 'synthetic' version of California that never locked down by taking the weighted average of other states that didn't impose shelter-in-place orders.
"Stone says the model is less useful than looking at actual outcomes and argues that their findings don't support the use of shelter-in-place orders. 'They find that their shelter-in-place reduced deaths beginning four days after it was implemented, which means that you must assume that … a considerable share of COVID-19 cases die four days after infection,' says Stone. "The problem is that's not even long enough for the incubation time.'
"Friedson concedes that social distancing behavior increased before the lockdowns, but he argues that the lockdowns increased the magnitude of the effects by forcing noncompliant individuals to stay home more. 'What we're talking about with this lockdown is that we're putting some extra juice behind this,' says Friedson....
"Stone says that what likely flattened the curve was voluntary social distancing, prompted by information about the dangers of the virus, in conjunction with the closure of schools and large assemblies. Instead of shelter-in-place orders, he says the rest of the world should learn from the approach taken by Hong Kong, which never issued a stay-at-home order and has just four documented COVID-19 deaths. He says the city accomplished this by banning all travel from China early on, encouraging universal use of masks, and implementing mandatory, centralized quarantines of sick or exposed individuals."
Read more: https://reason.com/video/were-the-covid-19-lockdowns-a-mistake/
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