Lockdown 'Worked' in Some Places, But That Doesn’t Mean It Was Justified

In a recent post, I argued that “lockdown works, or it doesn’t”. My point was that just because lockdowns ‘worked’ in China and a few other places, doesn’t mean they had a large impact in the U.K. or most of Europe. (By ‘worked’ I mean that they stopped the virus in its tracks and kept a lid on further outbreaks.)

Will Jones has taken issue with my premise. He doesn’t think lockdown worked anywhere. On his reading of the evidence, border controls made a difference, but other than that we don’t really know why some countries saw major outbreaks and others didn’t.

As an aside, Will and I agree that regardless of whether lockdowns ‘worked’ in China or elsewhere, it was clearly the wrong policy for countries like Britain. So why discuss the issue at all? Well, if we want to convince the people who think it was the right policy for Britain (of whom there are still very many) we need to have the correct model of the world. We need to be able to explain all the data.

In my post, I cited evidence that several parts of China – including the capital, Beijing – didn’t see a spike in excess mortality until December of 2022. This suggests that essentially all outbreaks in China were contained for three years after the initial one. (Again, I’m not saying China followed the right policy; I’m just describing what I think happened there.)

Will points out that no other country in East Asia had a major outbreak in 2020, suggesting, “East Asia just wasn’t very susceptible to the initial strains.” But even if he’s right, this can’t explain why Beijing had no major outbreaks for three years. It can only explain why they didn’t have one in 2020.

Singapore, another East Asian country with a largely Chinese population, had its first major outbreak in October of 2021. That’s 14 months before Beijing. What does Will think explains this gap? Likewise, Taiwan had its first major outbreak in June of 2022. That’s six months before Beijing. What does he think explains this gap?

The only East Asian country that, to this day, has mysteriously avoided a major outbreak is Japan. (Although the country saw positive excess mortality for the last six months of 2022, there were no obvious spikes). Unlike Singapore and Taiwan, Japan does not have an ethnically Chinese population, so it’s arguably less relevant as a comparison.

Regarding Will’s claim that “East Asia just wasn’t very susceptible to the initial strains”, I would also note that Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea all used both border controls and lockdowns (of varying strictness) in 2020. So the only real mystery, as I’ve mentioned before, is Japan.

In my post, I argued that several countries were able to contain the virus “using a combination of lockdowns and border controls”. While Will accepts that border controls “can be successful, for a time”, he questions whether “lockdowns are pulling any weight, rather than just being there as an unnecessary extra”. So why do I think both are necessary to explain the data?

The reason is that several of the countries that managed to contain the virus using border controls did have outbreaks. It’s just that those outbreaks never snowballed like they did in Britain and most of Europe. My question to Will is: How can you explain why those outbreaks never snowballed other than by invoking lockdown?

Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark, Singapore and South Korea all had outbreaks in March of 2020. Why did these outbreaks not snowball and lead to spikes in excess mortality?

My explanation is the one I gave in my recent post: “When prevalence was relatively low, countries had a shot at containing Covid, so long as there were strict border controls in place.” After all, such controls can stop new infections being brought in from outside, but they can’t stop infections that were already there from spreading. (Note that I originally made this argument in February of 2021.)

In each country, there was a critical threshold of prevalence below which a lockdown of given strictness could have ‘worked’ (in combination with border controls). Places like Denmark and South Korea only needed relatively mild lockdowns because they acted when prevalence was still low. China needed a much tougher lockdown because by the time they acted prevalence was far higher.

Of course, there’s no way that China’s lockdowns passed a cost-benefit test, let alone a basic human rights test. But it’s hard to explain all the data if you assume they had no impact on viral transmission.