Sorry to break this: but lockdowns work to delay disease progress!
Tim Spector's ZOE symptom tracker app is a highly accurate measurement system that uses millions of daily symptom reports to predict the spread and extent of covid19. It is largely independent of govt, SAGE, ONS or PHE (the usual suspects), except for modest cross calibration purposes. Here is the near real time plot of covid-19 disease levels over time
https://covid.joinzoe.com/data#levels-over-time
Remarks:
After the great summer lull up to the start of Sept, the virus sprung back to life (due to virus seasonality?) through september; I still remember my great surprise and disappointment. It accelerated tremendously after Oct 4, the slope reassembled an almost vertical rocket launch until very suddenly peaking and going into an immediate fast slump on 5th Nov. Something very dramatic happened to the virus or its environment on 5th Nov. Looking in wikipedia, it says: England would enter a four-week national lockdown on 5 November, when pubs, restaurants, leisure centres and non-essential shops would close.
The sudden slump continued unabated until very suddenly turning into a trough. The turn started on 7th Dec, few days after 4 week lockdown ended. The turn in the trend was complete by 12 Dec and going into an immediate and striking upward trajectory, again resembling an almost vertical rocket launch that still continues as I write, see the ZOE app link hover over the date to check yourself.
https://covid.joinzoe.com/data#levels-over-time
Conclusion, the national lockdown from 5 November appears to have caused an immediate fast slump in new cases starting on 5th Nov and continuing until lockdown was released, at which point the disease trajectory resumes exactly as it left off, hence the 4 week lockdown created a delay of exactly 4 weeks duration, but disease continued where it had left off immediately after lockdown lifted.
Whatever was happening to cause infection in England prior to 5th Nov ceased. I know of no other effect so drastic it could have had such immediate and obvious results. Whatever was happening in England prior to 5th Nov resumed after Dec 7th. And disease was immediately back where it had been at start of lockdown.
I'm glad to inform (with some sadness) lockdown sceptics, that it is almost certain that in these circumstances the lockdown worked. I greatly welcome all constructive comments especially those that suggest plausible alternative explanations.
In mitigation for sceptics, I add that lifting the 5 Nov lockdown allowed disease to resume from the same place; all things being equal, the only benefit was a 4 week delay. Whether the delay was used wisely is hard to say.
Define "worked".
SAGE and imperial modelling predicts a lockdown to delay any issues but create a spike in R and cases to higher than before 28 days after release.
Lancet analysed lockdown v1 data globally and found this exact trend.
Welsh data shows same, England is heading in an almost identical curve.
So "lockdown" only works if you stop looking shortly after its over.
Long term it looks like models were correct and it just makes he situation worse next time every single time you do it.
So theyll only "work" if you never ever want to remove them.
Using that logic you can say Germany won WW2 if you stop counting after 1940.
And sorry to burst your bubble but that app data proves exactly zero.
Here is the actual science. The mathematics. With about 140 years of history behind it by this stage.
With a novel infection unless there is an effective therapeutic treatment and an existing safe and proven vaccine already available at the start of the outbreak for the novel infectious agent lockdowns, quarantines , or any form of physical isolation have exactly zero effect on the total mortality numbers for the outbreak. Zero. Because all lockdowns do is time displace infections, they do change the area under the infection curve. So may defer a local peak by 15/30 days, but the total 180/360/720 days stay exactly the same.
Thats the mathematics. Thats the science. And has been for many generation since first established.
The only possible justification for lockdowns might be health system capacity management but as it turns out the only countries which need that are those with 100% socialized medical systems. Which have no surge capacity by design. Like Italy or Spain. But not the UK. But even in Italy in March / April when the provincial systems of Lombardy and Piedmont were overwhelmed the county as a whole still had plenty of excess capacity. The collapse of the medical system in Lombardy at the time was due to purely political consideration at the national / regional level when regional medical resource sharing broke down.
So even there short term lockdowns had no material effect on the outcome.
So no, that app data proves nothing.
Lockdowns obviously reduce transmission and therefore infections but what they don’t do is eliminate the virus. So as soon as all those uninfected people are released what do you think is going to happen. Even the Government recognised that the first lockdown was to “flatten the curve”, it was never going to reduce the numbers getting infected. Only a vaccine can do that.
It accelerated tremendously after Oct 4, the slope reassembled an almost vertical rocket launch until very suddenly peaking and going into an immediate fast slump on 5th Nov. Something very dramatic happened to the virus or its environment on 5th Nov. Looking in wikipedia, it says: England would enter a four-week national lockdown on 5 November
So if the "slump" occurred on the very day lockdown started, lockdown cannot have been responsible for it. People do not get infected and immediately develop symptoms.
