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If Lockdowns are Needed, Why Did More People Die in U.S. States Which Locked Down Than Those Which Did Not?

by Will Jones
18 April 2021 1:02 AM

One of the great things about America is that it has 50 states that can set their own policy across a broad range of areas, including on public health and lockdowns. This has allowed some to resist the stampede to impose swingeing restrictions on normal life in the hope of limiting transmission of SARS-CoV-2, and this provides us with a valuable control group in the great lockdown experiment that can give us an idea what might have happened if we hadn’t made some intervention or other.

During the autumn and winter a new surge in Covid infections prompted most US states, like most Western countries, to reimpose restrictions. But a few resisted. Eleven states did not impose a stay-at-home order and left people at liberty to leave their homes whenever they wished. Of these, four – Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and South Dakota – did not impose any restrictions at all and treated it pretty much like any other winter.

Although there are various differences between states that might have affected Covid outcomes, because they all form part of one country there are enough similarities to make comparisons useful. In particular, if lockdowns are effective and necessary to prevent hundreds of thousands of extra deaths (or the equivalent for the size of the population), then those states which didn’t lock down should have a far worse death toll. If the death tolls are not much worse, but about the same (or better), then lockdowns cannot be having a large impact on preventing Covid deaths.

In the chart above I have used data from Worldometer to plot the current total Covid deaths per million for each state. I have coloured the 11 states which did not lock down (i.e., impose a stay-at-home order) this winter in red. I have also calculated the average for the two groups of states, those which did not lock down over the winter and those which did, and coloured them in yellow.

As you can see, states which did not lock down over the winter, far from having many times more Covid deaths, have actually had fewer – 1,671 vs 1,736 deaths per million. There may be demographic or other reasons that some states have a higher or lower number of deaths than others so we shouldn’t read too much into the precise differences. But even so, if lockdowns are supposed to suppress the virus to low levels and thus prevent ‘hundreds of thousands’ of deaths (or the population equivalent), then how is this possible? The only conclusion is that lockdowns do not work as intended and do not suppress the virus.

This conclusion is reinforced by looking at the death tolls in the four states which imposed no restrictions at all over the winter, the average of which is 1,716 deaths per million, which is still below that of those which imposed lockdowns (1,736). Florida reopened in the autumn, Georgia and South Carolina in the spring of 2020, and South Dakota never closed. Yet overall they have suffered fewer Covid deaths per million than the states which imposed stay-at-home lockdowns this winter.

Those academic teams which produce models predicting doom for places which don’t impose the measures they recommend should be challenged to apply their models to these states and hindcast the last winter. Any model which cannot accurately reproduce the known outcomes for these states should be calibrated until it can. Otherwise, if it can’t get the answer right for the past, why should we trust it for the future?

The modelling teams at Warwick, Imperial and LSHTM can be found on Twitter (as can LSHTM’s Adam Kucharski) if anyone feels like putting these questions to them.

Tags: AmericaFloridaLockdownsSouth Dakota

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30 Comments
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karenovirus
karenovirus
4 years ago

In the Roundup above the USA is listed as one of the few countries where we might be allowed to go on holiday this year.
I expect right now besmirched ferguson is telling bozo that
‘obviously it is dangerous to go to unlocked down States and that permissions should reflect this’.

Re the last two paragraphs, The Met Office employs a large team of people to see to what degree their long, medium and short term weather forecasts (all based on computer models) are born out by reality; I expect a most financial outfits and large retailers do the same.

8
0
Brett_McS
Brett_McS
4 years ago

That lockdowns don’t work on viruses has been known since mid 20th century. The question is, how did this knowledge suddenly get completely un-learnt?

42
0
TheTartanEagle
TheTartanEagle
4 years ago
Reply to  Brett_McS

A lot of knowledge in many areas has been unlearnt. I can amaze my graduate nephew with stuff that I learnt from my mother, who left school in her teens without a single qualification. The sort of knowledge that was passed down, to keep you and your family healthy, common sense plus some knowledge of hygiene, symptoms, managing illness etc. All forgotten over the last 50 years. Within the medical realm, I have the sneaking suspicion that “evidence-based medicine” has deleted everything from the course that was based on decades of observations and experience, and only permits that which is generated from huge and expensive trials, under the control of large commercial organisations. Neat.

16
-1
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  TheTartanEagle

Oh dear – blame ‘evidence based medicine’ for ills (like masking) confected on the basis of the ‘common sense’ and ‘folk wisdom’ that you advocate.

The problem isn’t the scientific evidence base – it’s the distortion and manipulation of it. The CEBM, remember, has been one of the few lights in the darkness of primitive superstition.

6
-1
chris c
chris c
4 years ago
Reply to  RickH

Yes you can’t call it “evidence-based medicine” when half the evidence is missing/hidden

7
0
karenovirus
karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  TheTartanEagle

Some years ago while undemonising for milk for having the wrong sort of cholesterol our clever scientists ‘discovered’ that calcium in milk had the surprising additional benefit of helping children develop healthy bones.

Really ? My grandma definitely knew that.

11
0
TheTartanEagle
TheTartanEagle
4 years ago
Reply to  karenovirus

And the promotion of skimmed milk as being healthier than full fat. Vitamin D is fat soluble and found in the creamy bit. The saving on calories is neglible, 49 vs 65 per 100 ml. Yet they follow “NHS guidelines” and use semi skimmed in my child’s school as it is “healthier”. Children should always have full fat milk.

11
0
SueJM
SueJM
4 years ago
Reply to  TheTartanEagle

And raw and 100% grass fed and organic! Apparently calcium from homogenized milk is not easily absorbed! Basically we’ve come a very long way from trad, healthy diets that our great grandmothers knew a thing or two about. But that comes from sticking to a theory of pasteurization that the ‘owner’ of the theory decried on his death bed. Paradigm shifts happen both ways.

Nothing to do with Covid however… or is it?!

Last edited 4 years ago by SueJM
4
0
jimfahy
jimfahy
4 years ago

The academic teams should hindcast the US states that didn’t lock down? You’re confusing them with scientists.

8
0
Monro
Monro
4 years ago

Great article. Thank you.

The Free World reduced to 17 States of the good old U.S.A.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRfiwIhG4gU

7
0
alw
alw
4 years ago

Perhaps we could have an article on why South Africa with no vaccines currently administered have reached herd immunity? Please ask Nick Hudson of PANDA.

24
0
SueJM
SueJM
4 years ago
Reply to  alw

yeah!

1
0
peyrole
peyrole
4 years ago

Caution, the US is a big place with varying weather patterns. Florida’s ‘winter’ is in many ways its best season, people go out, get jobs done on property etc during the winter. It might be a little cooler, but its DRY. Summer is very wet and more people stay indoors with A/C on because of the humidity and bugs. However it is true that flu jab season in Florida is when their weather is at its best during winter, mainly because visitor/snow bird numbers are usually at their peak, so more chance of infection from the frozen north states.

6
-2
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  peyrole

Good point. Simple attributions for the causes of difference in this are dangerous – that is one thing we do know.

What can be said is that the null hypothesis on lockdowns conclusively holds good.

3
0
watersider
watersider
4 years ago

Karenovirus,
Indeed and the met office super-duper mega million pounds computer which is used to make up their fairy tale global warming models has never been right yet.
I have yet to see where they told us they got their forecasts wrong.
Could you give me a link please?

5
-1
karenovirus
karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  watersider

My post referred to weather predictions
and deliberately left the Met Office involvement in global warming projections out of it.
There I no link as I was told of it by the person who runs the checking department.

Last edited 4 years ago by karenovirus
1
0
John
John
4 years ago

It doesn’t matter what the reality is, the data must be wrong, the models are correct. Change the data to match the models. /sarc
This is exactly what the proponents of anthropogenic climate change do.
The antithesis of the scientific method as stated by Richard Feynman.

14
0
John
John
4 years ago

Is there any evidence that coronavirus infections follow different seasonal trajectories dependent on latitude? I am aware that influenza is latitude dependent.

4
0
karenovirus
karenovirus
4 years ago
Reply to  John

There was a thread here at LS some months ago that discussed what appeared to be a double spike in infections for the USA in 2020 was in fact one spike in the northern states followed by a second one for the south.

2
0
BeBopRockSteady
BeBopRockSteady
4 years ago

Maybe certain states did not test enough to get their pandemic.

The use of PCR drives every analysis like this. Not to defend lockdowns, they are immoral and being used for other agendas, but to premise an analysis without first allowing for massive misattribution of Covid-19 due to misuse of PCR seems likely to dilute the strength of any conclusions

9
0
JayBee
JayBee
4 years ago

The only valid and necessary comparison one needs to make worldwide is between similarly located and structured masked and lockdowned North Dakota and always unmasked and open South Dakota.
Result: None of the two theoretically effective and logical interventions made any difference in the real world, as the trajectory and size of the pandemic and its toll was absolutely identical.
As Sebastian Rushworth commenrd recently: logic is often proven very wrong in medicine.

10
0
mmacg
mmacg
4 years ago

It’s not just that the average is marginally (4%) lower, this is a small difference and not necessarily significant.

Much more important is that the Min-Max range (335 to 2,830) and the Strandard Deviation (644) for Lockdown are much higher than for No Lockdown (675 to 2,208) and 445.

If lockdowns were relatively beneficial, the min-max range and standard deviation should be smaller. They are not.

And globally, a linear regression analysis of Lockdown Stringency vs Deaths/1M shows no reduction of deaths with increased stringency. To the contrary, there is a correlation between higher stringency and higher death rates, though the relationship is not significant.. I believe the path of causality is:
Reported Covid Deaths —> Panicked Politicians * Excited Epidemiologists * Hysterical Media Doomnfearmongering + Other Unknown Factors —> Higher Stringency

3
0
BillRiceJr
BillRiceJr
4 years ago

The people who say lockdown skeptics are “denying” the science, are, in fact, the people who are denying (or reject) real science.

9
0
SueJM
SueJM
4 years ago
Reply to  BillRiceJr

Science must by definition be up for debate. Any scientist who questions but is not open to that is not a true scientist.

8
0
PhantomOfLiberty
PhantomOfLiberty
4 years ago

There is not strong statistical difference between those that locked down and those that didn’t but certainly no evidence for draconian measures.

0
0
marebobowl
marebobowl
4 years ago

The USA has a funny way of counting COVID deaths.rules for doing so changed last year at the start of the plandemic. So if you die in a MVA, or from cancer or a heart attack and you test positive for COVID, cause of death is listed as COVID. What a mess we are all in with regards, to PCR tests, the economy, masks, vaccines with thousands of adverse events and deaths and of course misappropriation of causation.

3
0
John Church 777
John Church 777
4 years ago

What is difficult to understand is how all our institutions, with centuries of knowledge and wisdom, just rolled over and accepted the concept of locking up our healthy population as some kind of standard and conventional approach to dealing with a respiratory viral epidemic. Can anybody find a medical textbook where this is described ?

3
0
Jon Garvey
Jon Garvey
3 years ago
Reply to  John Church 777

Even more weird they accepted the redefinition of basic medical concepts, such as “herd immunity” and even “case.”

0
0
Thinker1
Thinker1
4 years ago

Simplest answer would be age mix of population. We know the China virus is more deadly for older folks. But the ability to clearly identify this virus is fogged by poor us cdc instructions on pcr cycles, causing massive false positives. We may never really know.

0
0
WTF_Mate
WTF_Mate
4 years ago

Such a weird article. Is this what passes for thought within lockdown skeptics?

0
-2

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