Forget the Cheese of Zero COVID. Escape the Mousetrap of Lockdowns

摘要

On February 18, SKY News UK trumpeted that 'Lockdown is working! COVID-19 infection rate plummets in England'. Yet, as Figure 1 shows, Sweden with voluntary social distancing guidelines experienced an earlier and faster decline of COVID deaths per capita. The other interesting feature about the figure is how the mortality curves are policy-invariant, mimicking one another regardless of policy interventions between Sweden, the UK and the EU countries. The virus infection, hospitalization and mortality curves seem to rise and fall by seasons, independent of lockdowns. Western countries began adopting lockdown policies about a year ago in February-March 2020. To mark the anniversary, we'd like to raise four analytical puzzles. The first is why abstract models have proven so seductive despite an appalling failure to match observational data. In a leader on February 13, 2021, the sober, responsible and possibly the world's most influential newsmagazine, The Economist said that without vaccinations, 'the pandemic threatened to take more than 150 million lives'. It gave no source or explanation for this Spanish Flu-like estimate.