Back in March of 2020, there was a reasonable case for lockdown. A new, highly contagious virus was spreading through the population, and while the death rate for young people was low, the death rate for elderly people was quite high. Early data pointed to an IFR of about 1%. We were told that – in the absence of drastic measures – the virus would continue to spread until about two-thirds of the population had been infected. A simple back-of-the envelope calculation suggested that, if we did not take drastic measures, the death toll would be enormous.
The UK’s population is 66.7 million. Two-thirds of that is about 44.5 million. Applying a 1% IFR yields 445,000 deaths. And that was if the NHS didn’t become overwhelmed. If it did become overwhelmed, we were told, the IFR might rise to 2 or even 3%. Hence we were looking at a worst-case scenario of around 1.3 million deaths. (Note: this is about ten times the official death toll, which is itself a slight overestimate.)
Although lockdowns would come with massive costs, I reasoned, it was worth having one to prevent hundreds of thousands – or even a million – people dying. Hence I supported the first lockdown. Though it may have been a reasonable thing to do given the information available at the time, I now believe that locking down was the wrong decision.
There are many elements in the case against lockdowns, as I have outlined in an article on this website. But – outside a few specific countries like Australia and New Zealand – the case for lockdowns basically collapsed in May of 2020, when Sweden’s epidemic began to retreat.
Sweden, of course, was the only major Western country that didn’t lock down in 2020. And the argument for lockdowns made a clear prediction concerning what would happen there: since the country hadn’t taken drastic measures, it would see substantially more deaths (relative to its population) than the countries that had locked down. Using a model “based on work by” Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College, researchers at Uppsala University predicted there would be 96,000 deaths by July 1st.
Fortunately, that isn’t what happened. The number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths by July 1st was only 5,370. And up to week 51, the country saw age-adjusted excess mortality of just 1.7% – below the UK and below the European average.
Now of course, Sweden isn’t identical to the UK. It’s more trusting, less densely populated, and has fewer multi-generational households. However, it isn’t dramatically different from the UK in these respects. So even if one might have expected fewer deaths in Sweden than in the UK, given the same policies, the fact that Sweden didn’t lock down should have massively increased its death toll. But it didn’t.
One reply to the argument I’ve just made is that Sweden did much worse than its neighbours. This reply has been extensively addressed by other commentators, and in any case the point remains that Sweden did not do catastrophically. Both its first and second epidemics retreated long before the herd immunity threshold was reached, and far less than 1% of the population has died.
The evidence from Sweden does not imply that the correct approach to COVID-19 was “do nothing”. As I’ve argued previously, a focused protection strategy like the one recommended in the Great Barrington Declaration would have been much less costly, and might have saved more lives, than the Government’s actual policy of intermittent lockdowns.
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There was never, never any case for lockdown – never in a free democratic society under the rule of common law. And that argument is why we are where we are today.
Completely agree. We should never have copied the Chinese Communist Policy. We should have stuck to Western principles and the Western plan like Sweden did.
We had a pandemic plan as did Sweden but we had a weak government and so we are where we are now.
I don’t think that ‘weak’ is the adjective for this government.
Agreed. The adjective is not publishable!
Bought comes close
Still largely unknown is the (huge) number of people who have died from non-Covid causes that would not have been expected to die if there had been no lockdowns. I just read a post that said about 26,000 citizens of 15 African nations (population 860 million people) have died of COVID. However, up to 30 million people are at risk of perishing in the future due to the economic impact of the lockdowns (I assume from starvation and the lack of basic medical care). Even if the real figure is 10 percent of 30 million, this is a staggering number and represents “unnecessary” or “preventable” deaths on a massive scale.
Still largely unknown is the (huge) number of people who have died from non-Covid causes that would not have been expected to die if there had been no lockdowns.
Still largely unknown is the (huge) number of people who have died from non-Covid causes that would not have been expected to die if there had been no lockdowns.
I agree but it’s natural to shelter from a storm, I fell perhaps lockdowns were inevitable since the virus spread only when people mingle. We like to mingle, due to our nature. We do not like being told to shelter from the storm by Mr BigAndFatJohnson, that’s part of the trouble. Bossed around by pricks.
I recall a very early report that Indias largest producer of longstanding vaccines for polio, TB and others was going to transfer all its production into the soon to be developed Covid vaccines.
This was presented as an heroic response to the Covid panic but said nothing about the poor souls who would be denied tried and trusted vaccines for more established diseases.
Also: still largely unknown here, is the (huge) number of people who have died who were wrongly certified as having died from COVID. If a figure of 23% wrong is published, it is a given the actual percentage is a lot higher.
Pre pandemic, pandemic advice from the WHO was explicit, do not lock countries down.
But potato head Boris and his motley crew of liars ignored this and followed China’s example, thankfully without welding domestic doors shut to ensure compliance.
We followed the example of a country that dispensed it’s manufactured disease from a laboratory in Wuhan, then tried to convince the world a Bat was the culprit.
These are the people the potato head trusted, along with the Arithmetical idiot Ferguson, with the UK’s fate. And in face of overwhelming evidence from Sweden continued to torture the country, because he figured that by scaring the sh!t out the country he could push through the long dead ID card.
Flip Flop, Flim Flam, and Fluking Iriot!
Indeed, there NEVER, EVER was ANY case for lockdown, period, full stop. It should have been completely off the table from day one. So let’s NOT give even the slightest credence or concessions to the pro-lockdown side.
I wish the article would have pointed out the average age of someone who has died from or with COVID in Sweden. I don’t have the data in front of me but I’m pretty sure it is at or beyond the average life expectancy of a Swedish citizen. And, I believe, by far, the largest cohort of Swedish victims is 85 and older (as is the case in most countries).
To me, the most important metric of COVID is the percentage of the population that is routinely “moving around” in society who develop a severe case or die. It’s also important that we look at the number of severe cases or deaths that happened in Sweden schools, which I believe, never completely shut down and might not even require masks for students. This data set shows how ridiculous all the policies in other countries were that kept students out of school for so long.
For Swedish citizens under the age of, say, 60, COVID has posed no statistically significant risk to one’s “health and safety.” And Sweden has achieved this result from, basically, doing nothing (at least compared to 95 percent of the world’s nations).
Much mischief was made by lockdown zealots about Swedens high initial death toll (compared to its Scandinavian neighbours) but this was entirely due to them making the same ‘mistake’ as the UK in decanting untested elderly patients back to their care homes which were already occupied by the most vulnerable.
Sweden is very different from the rest of Scandinavia, loads of Soviet style housing block and a higher percentage of the darker skinned, who really struggle with the low VIT D levels in the Northern hemisphere. Arbitrary shutdown was always a lunatic policy. The winter ones ruinous.
Further proven by the better numbers of no lockdown Skane/Malmö vs neighbouring lockdown Copenhagen in the 1st wave.
BINGO
Why neighbours? Why not Belgium – seat of the great EU?
Why not even the U.K.?
Only because it doesn’t fit the narrative.
Belgium, strictest lockdown in Europe, amongst the highest death rate.
Indeed. Notice the lockdowners never compare Belarus, Nicaragua, Tanzania, Uruguay, or Brazil with their own respective stricter neighbors. Or the Faeroe Islands vs Iceland either. Or the 12 US states (especially South Dakota, the freest state of all, who ended up being a largely average state in terms of deaths) who didn’t lock down with the 38 states and DC that did. Or Florida vs California in terms of age adjusted excess deaths. And so on. Because one can clearly see from excess death rates that lockdowns didn’t do a LICK of good whatsoever.
And more recently, since last winter the lockdowners don’t even compare Sweden to their Nordic neighbors anymore in terms of excess deaths. For the same reasons.
The people you are appealing to are ignorant brutes, without knowledge or subtlety.
That’s an interesting self analysis.
The burden of proof for a novel, potentially dangerous intervention lies with those proposing it, not with those following what was previously agreed orthodoxy. No proof was ever offered, nor did those imposing the intervention ever seek it.
Lockdowns are probably immoral on their face.
Finally, in case anyone had any doubt, it is now clear that governments, media and other institutions cannot be trusted to use such powers in an honest and measured way, so even if such powers might in some hypothetical situation improve matters, we cannot accept anything being done in the name of “public health” on this scale, ever again.
Humans cannot be trusted with virtually unlimited power.
Indeed, it turns the precautionary principle completely on its head. It should be, “first do no harm”, and lockdowns are known to be inherently harmful.
NO, THERE WAS NOT A CASE FOR BRUTAL CHINESE COMMUNIST REPRESSION, NEVER WAS, IS NOT, AND NEVER WILL BE.
Try telling that to BoJo, Hatt Mancock their crones and the 80% of the population who it seems, simply cannot think for themselves.
I disagree that lockdown seemed reasonable in March 2020, given that the U.K.’s pandemic preparedness plan (supported by WHO) explicitly argued against one.
It’s wrong to fall back on the claim that initial data suggested 450,000-1,000,000 deaths since there was no evidence last year, and there’s even less today, that lockdowns actually significantly reduce the number of cases. Even Bojo the clown was claiming last March that all lockdown would do is flatten the curve, i.e. result in the same number of cases and deaths but spread over a longer period of time relieving pressure on the NHS.
A number of comments are saying that lockdown should never be used. I call these people lockdown sceptics in principle, and respect their opinion, but wish to disagree. I class myself as a lockdown sceptic in pratice, i.e. I think it’s theoreticaly possible (although incredibly unlikely outside of science fiction) that we may one day face a pandemic that is so deadly that some level of restrictions, even if only partially effective, may be shown to prevent enough deaths they are justified. Covid isn’t that epidemic, and I don’t think the evidence ever suggested it was.
I can see arguments for “in principle” and “in practice” lockdown opposition, but what seals it for “in principle” in my view is seeing how supposedly democratic govts and countries and media and judiciary and political opposition have abused the power they were given/manufactured for themselves. They cannot be trusted, ever, so no matter what the emergency they should not have these powers. If the emergency is genuine, they do not need them.
And there’s another giant elephant in the room that’s clearly off-limits to serious investigation – namely the almost certainty that this virus was “spreading” – and spreading “widely” – months before all the lockdowns, etc. were imposed. There’s no way that NPIs could “stop” or really “slow” a virus that MILLIONS of people had already contracted by December 2020 (if not November 2020). To use a common expression, the “Horses” of virus “spread” were already well out of the barn when public health officials tried to corral them back into this proverbial barn. I also strongly suspect that at least some “public health officials” HAD to have known this … then and now.
Edit: The likely “early spread” I reference above of course probably began in November and December of 2019 (not 2020).
Here’s a story where I chronicled my own adventures in trying to present evidence of likely/possible “early spread.” You can see the conclusions I reached and why I reached these conclusions.
https://uncoverdc.com/2020/07/13/covid-19-is-a-real-search-for-the-truth-now-taboo/
And look at the track record of the nutter who came up with the numbers. How the hell does someone like that remain in place? Where else would such a proven incompetent retain such a vital role? So many human lives in his hands FFS.
This article is completely wrong and a betrayal of our beliefs. Lockdown was wrong from day one. The whole point of having a plan is to provide guidance while further information is gathered. We know how URIs work. They differ in IFR and target groups but not enough to be called ‘new’ or justify the abandonment of carefully thought out plans. Once you’ve accepted the first lockdown was justified you’ve opened a negotiation. The position has to be it was WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.
Look at these guys!
There’s a bit of a lag, but it’s a good half an hour’s watch.
https://newtube.app/The_Angry_Albertan/nQcyRB4
I don’t know them, I have never seen them or heard them before; I have tried to follow this tragic strategy and done my level best to filter the technicalities, the maths and statistics, and see through the very obvious lies, distortions and deliberate dissembling as well as the more honest expressions of doubt from all sides of the arguments – I am neither a scientist nor mathematically bright. My – informed – instinct is that these guys are 100% correct and it sends a shiver down my spine as I finally realise without any lingering doubt (that definitely has fogged my tiny brain before but only up ’til now) we – UK sceptically minded individuals – are staring down the rifled barrel of the destruction of “life” – culturally, socially, intellectually – by those who have suddenly realised they can adopt the tactics of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler and very other despotic dictator, with the ultra left remoras of every faddish bandwagon running in their “tank tracks” – apologies for the mixed metaphors. Ferguson, Whitty, Vallance, JVT, Harries, SAGE, “independent SAGE”, Hancock, Hunt, O’Brien and all the other “Iago” like characters who have leant their unquestioning support to “Othello”aka BJ should be made to appear before their professional bodies before being struck off, stripped of their assets and publicly funded pensions, and thrown in jail for the remainder…I am now officially an anarchist.
Mr Carl, the ONLY early evidence was a ship off Japan. There was NEVER any possibility that that IFR was 1%. Just because Imperial used it did not make it right.
Take that away from your argument for supporting the first lockdown, which was rejected by the WHO in agreed national respiratory disease epidemic plans, and you are left with nothing to support it.
I am pleased you changed your mind, but frankly, so what?
There was also Italy and it was 100% clear the demographic it was affecting.
There was a large amount of published data from China, as well as the Italian data. The Diamond Princess was certainly not the only or best early evidence. All of the data from China and Italy pointed to a risk confined to the infirm elderly.
Lockdowns were and are nothing but a surrender to and acceptance of the Chinese ruse and Gates/WHO/WEF new world order plans.
The main immediate and practical problem with them is setting a precedent and the lack of an exit strategy, as Giesecke and Tegnell remarked early on and as the RoW has been and still is finding out.
Their futility and the evil intentions of governments who mandated them were or should have been obvious to anyone with an IQ above 50 once the first ridicculous goalpost change was undertaken, from ‘3 weeks to save the NHS’ to ‘R under 1’.
“Note: this is about ten times the official death toll, which is itself a slight overestimate.)”
Slight overestimate?
Give be a break! Utter bollox!
What I never hear anyone question is how the first curve can be accurate when the first cases were recovered from samples in Italy in October 2019. Yet we don’t have any recorded cases until March. Five months where the virus was circulating but nobody noticed?
Denis Rancourt has done some great work on this. He shows that epidemiologists have known definitively since 2010 that viruses follow a seasonal curve due to humidity (Shaman 2010). The pandemic only began after the WHO declared it on 11 March 2020, completely outside the natural seasonal curve.
I still haven’t had any satisfactory explanation for that, because the implications are too horrifying. If I’m missing something, please let me know.
Anecdotally, and with hindsight, Covid was circulating in the Southwest during the Autumn/Winter of 2020 which might explain why the region did not have much of an March/April ‘1st wave’ and not much of a second one this past winter either.
Also in Suffolk and probably Norfolk, and other places. The few people who saw their doctors were told there was a “nasty virus doing the rounds”. All correspondingly low levels of “official” covid presumably because immunity was established early.
Would be interesting to hear from more doctors about this.
I’m a freelance journalist who has done extensive research on likely “early spread.” I don’t understand why this is not universally accepted (well, maybe I do). Not only was the virus spreading months before the lockdowns, it was almost certainly spreading “widely.” If someone takes the time to read the following stories, he or she will (I think) agree with my conclusion. The first story summarizes some of my findings and also tells how I came to reach the conclusion that any real “search for the truth” on this (political) topic is completely taboo.
https://uncoverdc.com/2020/07/13/covid-19-is-a-real-search-for-the-truth-now-taboo/
If the virus did originate in China in November or December 2019, how did it spread so quickly to these four geographically-dispersed states in the U.S. by November and December?
This story from The Palm Beach Post identified 11 people from one small Delray Beach Florida neighborhood who had symptoms in November and December – and all 11 tested positive for COVID antibodies in April.
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/20200516/coronavirus-florida-antibody-tests-bolster-suggestion-covid-spread-early-in-florida
This Seattle Times story identified two people in Washington state who had symptoms in December and later tested positive for antibodies.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/antibody-test-results-of-2-snohomish-county-residents-throw-into-question-timeline-of-coronaviruss-u-s-arrival/
This story identified an Alabama couple who had symptoms in December and tested positive for antibodies multiple times in April, May, June and now even in January 2021 (more than a year after their onset of symptoms). The husband nearly died from the virus the first week of January 2020. (I wrote this story).
https://uncoverdc.com/2020/06/25/an-alabama-man-nearly-died-from-covid-19-the-first-week-in-january/
This You Tube clip is an interview with the mayor of Belleville NJ. He had bad symptoms in November 2019 and has tested positive for antibodies twice. He thinks he contracted the virus at a conference in Atlantic City where several other attendees also became sick with COVID symptoms.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpB3Lm0IP9w&fbclid=IwAR2HFr4-3PLI6LAcdpgGRknnSLFCPCbZDG8APbgfVm5iJC04h2FM80klq30
WSJ story – COVID antibodies found in 106 American Red Cross blood samples collected between December 2019 and January 2020. And the study was only from a few weeks in just nine states.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-likely-in-u-s-in-mid-december-2019-cdc-scientists-report-11606782449
Covid death figures are a “slight” overestimate???????? Data for comorbidities is consistently around 94%. The death toll is over-estimated by a factor of approximately 100/6 = 16.7, if we forget that merely being very old also greatly increases chances of dying.
The Covidian cultists make the petitio principii, circular argument fallacy, in which they start out by assuming the virus is particularly lethal, and then conclude that the virus must have been the cause of death.
It’s exactly the same as if you assume that a spot on the face is lethal, then you set up test centres that record whether or not the ‘patient’ has a spot on their face, and then if someone dies from heart disease or diabetes, etc., within 28 days of a positive ‘spot’ test, the conclusion is that it was a ‘spot’ death.
(The 1% or so non-elderly with no co-morbidities found to die from ‘spots’ have some undiagnosed, unknown condition, which remains unknown because the spot cultists don’t bother to investigate.)
It can’t be said frequently enough : there are no ‘Covid death figures’ worth the hard disk space. They are either PCR+ results for the deceased or simply guesswork..
‘Back in March of 2020, there was a reasonable case for lockdown.’
How could there have been since we know that no cost benefit analysis had been done?
Added to which, 5 minutes internet search by the policeman on the door at No 10 any day in March 2020 would have provided the following from a coronavirus expert in China at the time of the outbreak:
‘The Chinese healthcare system is very overwhelmed with all the tests going through. So my thinking is this is actually not as severe a disease as is being suggested. The fatality rate is probably only 0.8%-1%. There’s a vast underreporting of cases in China. Compared to Sars and Mers we are talking about a coronavirus that has a mortality rate of 8 to 10 times less deadly to Sars to Mers. So a correct comparison is not Sars or Mers but a severe cold. Basically this is a severe form of the cold.’
Prof John Nicholls, Univ. of Hong Kong 06 Feb 2020
A government in office……but not in power…….
Comparing Sweden with its Scandinavian neighbours is like comparing UK and Ireland.
hospital-acquired covid, I bet it is more than the supposed 25% of infections…
The first sentence just shows that Noah Carl had no idea of epidemiology in March.Everybody in the field had already knowledge of a UK pandemic fluplan which for a 350000 death scenario never even considered such an absurd suggestion as lockdown, which was an invention of CCP spreading faster than the virus
Considering that I’m sure it was pretty well known by the medical authorities that (1) there were effective early stage medicine treatments available (and protocols were very quickly developed by experienced doctors worldwide that unequivocally demonstrated that), (2) vitamin D is critically important to maintaining a healthy natural immune system, and (3) T-cell immunity plays a significant role (but was ignored), the decision to lockdown, instead of establishing a nationwide vitD and treatment program that would have maintained the economy, cost a fraction of the vaccine and ‘protected the NHS’, is bordering on criminal negligence. The has to be an enquiry, with ministers and authorities testifying *under oath* for fear of contempt of court charges, to establish the truth and prevent such a debacle in future,
The biggest question of all: Why no early treatment and prophylaxis (HCQ, IVM, Pulmicort, various vitamins, etc.)? Because if they did, that would have taken the wind out of the sails for the jabs.
Even a focused protection strategy, if one is not careful, can end up making too many concessions to lockdowners. Especially those who exaggerate its effectiveness and ignore or omit early treatment and prophylaxis. The Swiss Doctor was certainly right about that.