It’s clear by now that China’s lockdown ‘worked’. By this I mean that it stopped the virus in its tracks and kept a lid on further outbreaks for at least a year, possibly three.
Although China’s official Covid deaths data are unreliable (more so than most countries’, I mean), there are good-quality excess deaths data from Hong Kong and Macao. These show no major upticks until March of 2021 in the case of Hong and December of 2021 in the case of Macao.
In addition, the New York Times tracked the number of obituaries published by several scholarly institutions: the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Harbin Institute of Technology, and Peking University Health Science Center. All these show massive upticks in December of 2022, around the time China ended its zero-Covid policy.
Since none of the series shows an uptick before then, it is plausible that neither Beijing nor Harbin saw a major outbreak for the first three years of the pandemic.
Now, we already knew it was possible to contain the virus using a combination of lockdowns and border controls: Australia and New Zealand managed it until February/March of 2022. But China’s feat is altogether more impressive. Australia and New Zealand are both islands in the South Pacific, which had a head start on everyone else. China is the world’s largest country (by population), with 14 land borders. And it’s where the pandemic began!
Since China’s lockdown stopped Covid in its tracks, does this mean that lockdowns in Europe and America also had a large impact (even if they didn’t halt the virus completely)? I don’t think so. In fact, I still think their impact was small at best.
To begin with, China’s lockdown was far stricter. In Britain, we were still allowed to visit pharmacies and supermarkets, while ‘key workers’ went to work every day on public transport. In China, people were sometimes locked in their homes for weeks at a time – with food and medicines delivered by Government workers, or even drones. And those suspected of having the virus were sent to makeshift ‘quarantine camps’. (This also happened in Australia.)
Here’s what zero-Covid-advocate Jeremy Hunt said in July of 2020:
My sister lives in Beijing. And she flew back to Beijing in the middle of lockdown. And just to give you an idea of the contrast: she was escorted from the airport in Beijing to her home by Ministry of Health officials, and then put into her home for two weeks quarantine. The door was sealed, and she had a police car sitting outside her house periodically.
What’s more, there’s good reason to believe the effect of lockdown is not linear. In other words, there isn’t a one-to-one relationship between the strictness of lockdown and the number of deaths prevented; it either works (as in Australia, New Zealand, China and few other places) or it doesn’t.
Once the virus is sufficiently prevalent, people can easily pass it to one another at ‘concentration points’ like pharmacies and supermarkets. And once it gets into hospitals and care homes, the death rate becomes largely independent of the prevalence in the wider community.
If there was a one-to-one relationship between strictness and deaths prevented, we’d expect to see much higher death rates in those places that eschewed lockdown – like Sweden, Japan and South Dakota. But that’s just not what the data show. In fact, Sweden and Japan are two of best performing countries.
Here’s how I’d interpret the evidence: when prevalence was relatively low, countries had a shot at containing Covid, so long as there were strict border controls in place. But once prevalence reached a critical level, there was little they could have done beyond ‘focused protection’ of the vulnerable – which is arguably what they should have done all along.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Although politicians would love to take the credit, I’m not sure that we know enough about how these viruses spread to attribute the lack of virus to containment measures, anywhere. Flu doesn’t strike all countries in the same way at the same time, without containment measures. Central/Eastern Europe had next to no COVID until late 2021, inspiring the mask movement, and was then hammered. Everywhere in Asia regardless of policy had hardly any COVID until their vax rollouts started. And it’s not clear why China had such a rough time with omicron; mortality displacement perhaps, which may be part of the explanation for Central/Eastern Europe too because 2018 and 2019 had seen significant excess mortality there.
“I’m not sure that we know enough about how these viruses spread…”
Yes we do! A Century’s worth of knowledge. They spread as airborne aerosols.
We don’t know why the outbreaks stop when they get to 10-15% of the population, something that the Imperial College model ignored. We don’t know why Asia was just fine for as long as it was, with or without lockdown. We don’t know why there are simultaneous outbreaks at great distances. We don’t know why there are outbreaks in Antarctic bases that have had no human contact for months. There have been theories about these things, for example Hope-Simpson’s theory of superspreaders.
Dodgy tests may have something to do with certain outbreaks particularly the isolated ones. Maybe they swabed a penguin.
Very true. Hope-Simpson was most likely correct about both seasonality as well as superspreaders and dormancy. A related theory is that Vitamin D deficiency explains all of the above.
Living in Thailand we were doing Ok with the’rona crap until the jabs came out.
For the whole of 2020 the death rate from the ‘rona was LOWER than the DAILY death rate on the roads.
Then came the jabs and infections/deaths soared.
All based on dodgy tests and the ineffective jabs.
What more can I say – the whole episode of ‘rona and the response to it has been either a major cock-up or a conspiracy to reduce to the worlds population to make us dependent on big pharma.
Well…is this not food for thought?
”TELL me about your personal experiences of Covid 19. Actually, wait, don’t. I think I may have heard it already, about a million times. You lost all sense of smell or taste – and just how weird was that? It floored you for days. It gave you a funny dry cough, the dryness and ticklishness of which was unprecedented in your entire coughing career. You’ve had flu a couple of times and, boy, when you’ve got real flu do you know it. But this definitely wasn’t flu. It was so completely different from anything you’ve ever known, why you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it had been bioengineered in a lab with all manner of spike proteins and gain-of-function additives, perhaps even up to and including fragments of the Aids virus . . .
Let’s be clear about this point, because something you often hear people on the sceptical side of the argument say is, ‘Of course, no one is suggesting that Covid didn’t cause a horrific number of deaths.’ But that’s exactly what they should be suggesting: because it’s true. Elmer was quoting the Age Standardised Mortality statistics for England and Wales dating back to 1941. What these show is that in every year up to and including 2008, more people died per head of population than in the deadly Covid outbreak year of 2020. Of the previous 79 years, 2020 had the 12th lowest mortality rate.
Covid, in other words, was a pandemic of the imagination, of anecdote, of emotion rather than of measured ill-health and death. Yet even now, when I draw someone’s attention to that ONS data, I find that the most common response I get is one of denial. That is, when presented with the clearest, most untainted (this was before ONS got politicised and began cooking the books), impossible-to-refute evidence that there was NO Covid pandemic in 2020, most people, even intelligent ones, still choose to go with their feelings rather with the hard data.”
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/covid-imaginary-pandemic-of-the-brainwashed/
In some countries like Ireland there was no excess mortality at all. But what they will say to something like that is “Ah but without lockdown and masks it would have been worse”. Then you show them Sweden. Then they give reasons why Sweden is not at all like the UK and the wicked Tories had run down the NHS so it wouldn’t have coped.
Is there not a more perfect example of cognitive dissonance then? We all know people like this. I’m married to one! Apparently the first one or two lockdowns were justified and worked. We don’t get beyond that otherwise it turns into World War 47 in our house. Best bury it, draw a line and move on, when loved ones and those in our social circles are involved. I hate it though. It shows lack of accountability and I’m a firm believer in adults capable of intelligent decision-making being held to account. This shit has destroyed relationships and can be an existing source of stress bubbling away under the surface if not addressed out in the open.
”Cognitive dissonance was first investigated by Leon Festinger, arising out of a participant observation study of a cult that believed that the earth was going to be destroyed by a flood, and what happened to its members — particularly the really committed ones who had given up their homes and jobs to work for the cult — when the flood did not happen.
While fringe members were more inclined to recognize that they had made fools of themselves and to “put it down to experience,” committed members were more likely to re-interpret the evidence to show that they were right all along (the earth was not destroyed because of the faithfulness of the cult members).”
https://simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html
Exactly.
Stop the spread, stop the economy!
Madness dressed up as policy.
Yeah.. but it did the job though didn’t it..
Murder the economy that is..
LDs don’t work. Rona proved that. However, ergo, heretofore…
China was hosting the Winter Olympics where countries around the world were competing who all embraced lockdowns.
China had little choice but to ensure the perceived safety of their Olympic guests.
In his recent speech, Mr Xi said China’s zero Covid policy had withstood the test of the Winter Olympics.
Shanghai is home to many US corporations and financiers and some suggest that it is from these US influences that Shanghai had draconian lockdowns.
More importantly Chinese officials have accused the US of releasing SARS-CoV-2 in China as a bioweapon. Other cities in China followed suit with lockdowns as they are also of the mindset that they are under biological attack by the US.
Also, Russia has raised concerns at the number of US funded biolabs in Ukraine and the research into targeted attacks against specific Slavic genomes.
Russia suffered many more deaths than they should have done from their strains of SARS-CoV-2.
Perhaps their embrace of lockdowns, QR codes, health passes etc. was a direct result of their belief that their country and people were under biological attack.
Another state that has accused the US of attacking them with SARS-CoV-2 is Iran whose leaders died disproportionally from Covid.
Perhaps the three biggest enemies of the US have cause for concern.
The actions by China and Russia to control their citizens by lockdowns and technology may be a result of them wanting to monitor their citizens, particular the Atlanticists, and the activities of foreign influence within their countries to stop fifth column infiltration by the US and other Western foreign powers particularly from future biological attacks.
Lockdowns worked for those countries who felt they were under biological attack from the US.
The rest of the world lapped up the lies and propaganda from the US and used lockdowns to bring in unnecessary draconian levels of control.
LOCKDOWNS SHOULD NEVER BE USED AGAIN FOR A MILD VIRUS.
“It’s clear by now that China’s lockdown ‘worked’. By this I mean that it stopped the virus in its tracks and kept a lid on further outbreaks for at least a year, possibly three.”
Shouldn’t this have been published on the 1st?
Australia & New Zealand ‘worked’ because closing their borders meant they kept the virus out. Once it got in, no amount of lockdown, masks, jabs ‘worked’.
The puzzle with China, is just how localised CoVid was there. Viruses circulate for some time, weeks/months before they become evident. CoV 2 should have spread throughout China. It didn’t and that had nothing to do with lockdowns. Nothing about this virus, or events in China makes sense, nor can be believed.
Lockdowns in all Countries actually came after the epidemic phase – too late to have any effect even if lockdowns could ‘work’.
To be clear. In UK – and elsewhere – CoV2 was circulating in the last three months of 2019. It entered the exponential spread phase during January 2020, peaking in early February and declining through February into March. Lockdowns came to late.
What don’t you understand about ‘airborne spread’? Respiratory viruses are not spread person to person.
Exactly. By no stretch of the imagination did lockdowns work – anywhere.
I disagree that lockdown was effective anywhere other than China, and I don’t believe their death rate data. I reckon Australia and New Zealand were able to stop the damn bug as far as they did by closing their borders – not through internal lockdowns. As a travel hub the UK could not have done this.
The overall course of the epidemic (first wave) in England and Wales as measured by the number and date of deaths where ‘Covid-19 mentioned on the death certificate’ was a clear Gompertz (natural epidemic) curve. The formula for the best fit curve is:
where dayno=1 is 1 Jan 2020.
The curve is an excellent fit from the start to end August, but there are minor differences, as we should expect if our countermeasures affected the rate of infections.
We should expect the actual death rate to be worse than the calculated curve before any beneficial interventions take effect and better afterwards.
However, at the beginning of the curve, up to about end-March 2020, the actual (diagnosed) death rate was lagging behind (better than) the Gompertz curve at a time when we should have expected the rate to be worse (we hadn’t made any supposedly beneficial interventions, except recommending hand washing and social distancing).
From 31 March to 19 April the death rate accelerated faster (was worse) than the natural epidemic curve, and from April 19 the death rate slowed relative to (was better than) the calculated curve. Allowing for an average lead time between infection and death it seems reasonable that the minor improvement around 19 April was due to lockdown on 23 March – a lag of 27 days.
If lockdown took 27 days to have a minor beneficial effect and the peak of deaths occurred on 8 April 2020 we can say with some confidence that peak infections were occurring at around 12 March and were therefore declining from then on. Infections were already declining well before lockdown.
By 12 March there had been 37 deaths where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate in England and Wales, but only 3 had been fully registered. The first day with more than one Covid-19 death was 5 March.
If we had assumed the epidemic would follow a Gompertz curve if we didn’t intervene, the death rate up to 23 March was already pointing to a peak in death rate of about 1,200 deaths/day (a little low) in early April. Instead our parliament listened to the apocalyptical predictions of Prof Ferguson et al which were demonstrably wrong before they were published on 16 March.
If the minor improvement in death rate at around 19 April was not due to lockdown then it had no observable beneficial effect at all.
That relies on you believeing chinese data.
Erm no. I stated that I didn’t believe the Chinese data. The thing I wrote was about England and Wales and showed that not only was lockdown almost ineffective in England and Wales, it was unnecessary as infections had begun to decline well before it was imposed.
If, of course, if you also don’t believe the England and Wales ‘Covid-19 mentioned on the death certificate’ diagnoses then we can use excess deaths to do the same analysis – but with a little more difficulty as we have to start by looking at the definition of ‘excess’ over what? 5-year average number? 5-year average rate? Extrapolation of past 10-year trend (that’s my preferred method)? We could even use separate ‘excess’ calculations for each age group (I’ve done it) and show the same effect – though I had to also account for estimated delays in death registrations after the date of death.
England and Wales 2020 mortality data is pretty consistent whether we look at Covid-19 diagnosed or ‘excess’ deaths. Sweden seems to have over-estimated their Covid diagnosed deaths (ie their excess deaths are less than their claimed Covid deaths). Australia’s data is rubbish – they reported a negative ‘excess’ but still quite a lot of Covd deaths. Norway seems to have slightly underestimated their Covid-19 deaths and USA vastly underestimated (ie their ‘excess’ deaths are far worse than their Covid deaths would account for). Sources: The Human Mortality database (https://mortality.org) and OWID. Note that China’s historical and current data has not been published in the HMD – my guess is because it is not reliable.
And when the lockdown was lifted in China due to unsustainable public pressure, nobody died.
China proved that mRNA jabs didn’t save anyone and the virus may have killed some older people in Marxh 2020, but that was it.
That’s the real story.
Well said Stewart.. the virus was a wimp.. if it existed at all.
It’s clear by now that China’s lockdown ‘worked’
There is certainly a stretch being applied to ‘worked.’
I don’t understand the point of articles like this. Are you just trying to rile people up?
Its called keeping the VIRUS myth alive and your attention off of what’s going on… over there..
Covid if it exists was mild for most, like flu
We’ve coexisted with such illnesses forever because there is no real alternative and normal life is impossible otherwise and normal life is what we must live
I dgaf whether lockdowns or mockdowns or masks or any of the other bs “worked” or not – I’m not going along with any of it
There was never an emergency by any sane definition of the word
I have completely had enough of all this nonsense regarding ‘lockdowns’
Covid 19 was simply another common cold coronavirus.
We know, have known for years, what the correct response should have been:
‘It is therefore arguable that in the case of infections like coronavirus or rhinovirus colds, which are normally quickly self-limited, the best approach would be to relieve the patient’s discomfort and disability and leave their immune system to take care of the virus.’
D.A.J. Tyrrell, Common Cold Unit 1992
It is, I am afraid, completely pointless to discuss whether lockdowns ‘worked’ or ‘didn’t work’
The only statistic of any relevance is overall annual all cause age adjusted mortality (accepting limitations to age adjustment, but, nevertheless, those are what actuaries use).
And overall annual all cause age adjusted mortality quite clearly shows that there was no ‘pandemic’ whatsoever…….anywhere……!
Referring to Chinese statistics is hopeless, as a Coronavirus expert on the ground in China at the time of the outbreak pointed out:
‘if you look at the cases outside of China the mortality rate is <1%. [Only 2 fatalities outside of mainland China]. 2 potential reasons 1) either china’s healthcare isn’t as good – that’s probably not the case 2) What is probably right is that just as with SARS there’s probably much stricter guidelines in mainland China for a case to be considered positive. So the 20,000 cases in China is probably only the severe cases; the folks that actually went to the hospital and got tested. 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…….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, University of Hong Kong 06 Feb 20
‘Focused protection’ of the vulnerable’ is, essentially, what we have been doing all our lives, avoiding the vulnerable when we have a virus. That is also the point of ‘care homes’: to protect the vulnerable. If they are incapable of doing that, since staff apparently move from one institution to another on a daily basis, that is quite simply a matter for care home management and regulation.
This has all been such a moronic, incompetent, pathetically led, complete and utter shambles…..there will be no lessons learned……this will happen again…….but the government must fall, at the very least, so that all politicians are clear about the minimum price they will pay for this level of purblind bovine idiocy…..
Something beginning with effing hell!
“stopped the virus dead in its tracks”
I take it you mean that deadly killer virus, you know, the one that ‘nearly’ killed prime-minister, the one with bodies piling up up in the streets, overflowing morgues, millions of families ‘grannyless’.. the one with the 99.8% recovery rate?
That virus.. ????
Indeed, when it comes to lockdowns, you either do China, or you do Sweden (or Belarus or Nicaragua or Tanzania or South Dakota). Anything in between clearly does more harm than good, at least in the long run. There really is no middle ground. And as we have seen, not even the world’s strictest and most draconian lockdowns (despite the astronomical cost) can really keep the virus at bay forever.
“Oh, East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet” A quote from a yet to be cancelled Rudyard Kipling.