In the spirit of Newton's Third Law, please allow me to offer an alternative opinion, one based on facts and irrefutable evidence.

This is an article that appears on the website of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners describing in detail the actions and effects of a strict and well-applied lockdown in the state of Victoria in Australia.

https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/ending-the-second-wave-how-did-victoria-get-to-zer

Victoria is a state comparable in size to the UK, with a population of 6.4 million, a million or so more than Scotland. It also happens to be the state that I live in, so I have first-hand experience of the lockdown in question and can therefore attest to the assertions made in the piece.

The conclusion? Lockdowns do work.

In the spirit of Newton's Third Law, please allow me to offer an alternative opinion, one based on facts and irrefutable evidence.

This is an article that appears on the website of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners describing in detail the actions and effects of a strict and well-applied lockdown in the state of Victoria in Australia.

https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/ending-the-second-wave-how-did-victoria-get-to-zer

Victoria is a state comparable in size to the UK, with a population of 6.4 million, a million or so more than Scotland. It also happens to be the state that I live in, so I have first-hand experience of the lockdown in question and can therefore attest to the assertions made in the piece.

The conclusion? Lockdowns do work.

Very interesting, and worthy of investigation.

Lockdowns may be managed in different ways, so what Victoria did would be useful to know. For example, were the elderly and vulnerable locked-down and well-protected? Perhaps you know?

To prove that lockdowns work, one would of course need to show that places with no lockdown do not work. Victoria may have been such a place. There is the possibility of the 'can being kicked down the road' if immunity has not been achieved.

I would also note the 6 months difference in season. The UK returned to normal weekly deaths mid-June and 'cases'/tests were something like 0.5% and estimated prevalence about 1/10 of this. This continued until September. It is when cases, and deaths, in Australia peaked.

Very interesting regarding the Victoria lockdown - I couldn't find any details in the report regarding exactly what was done however.

I'm glad to hear that things went well over there, but I would have to take issue with some of the statements made in the report - is it reasonable to use phrases such as 'heavy toll' when we are talking about very low numbers of deaths... though successful, was lockdown definitely appropriate....?

I imagine that to some reading this, my words may seem callous but I am afraid that we may be sacrificing basic human freedoms, which millions fought and died for during two world wars, in order to bolster the resources of under-funded and poorly planned health services which should have been able to cope with a viral pathogen which has a very low mortality rate.

Without wishing to go over old ground again - lockdown may appear to be 'saving lives' but actually it really isn't.... the problem is that all the unnecessary cancer deaths and suicides, all the morbidity caused by untreated chronic disease and mental health problems, all the fallout from a more impoverished society will be relatively unseen and unreported in the months and years to come. As an example, many more people die in cars every year than die in air disasters... but which do we remember - the thousands who die individually in RTAs or the 200 people who die all together when a plane crashes?

In the spirit of Newton's Third Law, please allow me to offer an alternative opinion, one based on facts and irrefutable evidence.

This is an article that appears on the website of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners describing in detail the actions and effects of a strict and well-applied lockdown in the state of Victoria in Australia.

https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/ending-the-second-wave-how-did-victoria-get-to-zer

Victoria is a state comparable in size to the UK, with a population of 6.4 million, a million or so more than Scotland. It also happens to be the state that I live in, so I have first-hand experience of the lockdown in question and can therefore attest to the assertions made in the piece.

The conclusion? Lockdowns do work.

Very interesting, and worthy of investigation.

Lockdowns may be managed in different ways, so what Victoria did would be useful to know. For example, were the elderly and vulnerable locked-down and well-protected? Perhaps you know?

To prove that lockdowns work, one would of course need to show that places with no lockdown do not work. Victoria may have been such a place. There is the possibility of the 'can being kicked down the road' if immunity has not been achieved.

I would also note the 6 months difference in season. The UK returned to normal weekly deaths mid-June and 'cases'/tests were something like 0.5% and estimated prevalence about 1/10 of this. This continued until September. It is when cases, and deaths, in Australia peaked.

Sweden - no lockdown and it didn't work.
Around 3.5 times higher deaths/million population compared to Denmark.

In the spirit of Newton's Third Law, please allow me to offer an alternative opinion, one based on facts and irrefutable evidence.

This is an article that appears on the website of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners describing in detail the actions and effects of a strict and well-applied lockdown in the state of Victoria in Australia.

https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/ending-the-second-wave-how-did-victoria-get-to-zer

Victoria is a state comparable in size to the UK, with a population of 6.4 million, a million or so more than Scotland. It also happens to be the state that I live in, so I have first-hand experience of the lockdown in question and can therefore attest to the assertions made in the piece.

The conclusion? Lockdowns do work.

I think it has been agreed that zero Covid cannot be achieved so finding a way to manage it well for the entire population has to be sought.