TruthArchive.ai - Tweets Saved By @the_brumby

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This will be my first and possibly last tweet (thread) as I am mostly here to learn. It is prompted by a recent study questioning lockdown efficacy that is getting a lot of attention. It appears people believe it to be the first of its kind, but I have been collecting similar

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studies since March 2020. Below are 30 published papers finding that lockdowns had little or no efficacy (despite unconscionable harms) along with a key quote or two from each:

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1.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/eci.13484 “there is no evidence that more restrictive nonpharmaceutical interventions (“lockdowns”) contributed substantially to bending the curve of new cases in England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, or the United States in early 2020”

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2.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.20160341v3 “Inferences on effects of NPIs are non-robust and highly sensitive to model specification. Claimed benefits of lockdown appear grossly exaggerated.”

Effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19: A Tale of Three Models medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences medrxiv.org

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3.https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(20)30208-X/fulltext “government actions such as border closures, full lockdowns, and a high rate of COVID-19 testing were not associated with statistically significant reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality”

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4.https://advance.sagepub.com/articles/preprint/Comment_on_Dehning_et_al_Science_15_May_2020_eabb9789_Inferring_change_points_in_the_spread_of_COVID-19_reveals_the_effectiveness_of_interventions_/12362645 “Official data from Germany’s RKI agency suggest strongly that the spread of the coronavirus in Germany receded autonomously, before any interventions become effective”

Was Germany’s Corona Lockdown Necessary? Was Germany’s Corona Lockdown Necessary? advance.sagepub.com

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5.https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.02090.pdf “the decline in infections in England...began before full lockdown…[S]uch a scenario would be consistent with...Sweden, which began its decline in fatal infections shortly after the UK, but did so on the basis of measures well short of full lockdown”

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6.https://www.datascienceassn.org/sites/default/files/Illusory%20Effects%20of%20Non-pharmaceutical%20Interventions%20on%20COVID19%20in%20Europe.pdf “the UK lockdown was both superfluous (it did not prevent an otherwise explosive behavior of the spread of the coronavirus) and ineffective (it did not slow down the death growth rate visibly).”

Page not found | Data Science Association datascienceassn.org

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7.https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-end-of-exponential-growth-the-decline-in-the-spread-of-coronavirus/ “Given that the evidence reveals that the Corona disease declines even without a complete lockdown, it is recommendable to reverse the current policy and remove the lockdown”

The end of exponential growth: The decline in the spread of coronavirus A similar pattern – rapid increase in infections to a peak in the sixth week, and decline from the eighth week – is common everywhere, regardless of response policies timesofisrael.com

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8.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.20088260v2 “stay at home orders, closure of all non-essential businesses and requiring the wearing of facemasks or coverings in public was not associated with any independent additional impact”

Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID-19 in Europe: A quasi-experimental study medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences medrxiv.org

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9.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1 “these strategies might not have saved any life in western Europe. We also show that neighboring countries applying less restrictive social distancing measures … experience a very similar time evolution of the epidemic.”

Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences medrxiv.org

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“since the full lockdown strategies are shown to have no impact on the epidemic’s slowdown, one should consider their potentially high inherent death toll as a net loss of human lives”

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10.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.26.20202267v1 “the model does not support [the] estimate that lockdown reduced the case reproduction number R by 81% or that more than three million deaths were averted by non-pharmaceutical interventions.”

Trajectory of COVID-19 epidemic in Europe medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences medrxiv.org

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11.https://www.nicholaslewis.org/did-lockdowns-really-save-3-million-covid-19-deaths-as-flaxman-et-al-claim/ “The case of Sweden, where the authors find the reduction in transmission to have been only moderately weaker than in other countries despite no lockdown having occurred, is prima facie evidence”

Did lockdowns really save 3 million COVID-19 deaths, as Flaxman et al. claim? A pdf copy of this article is available here. Key points about the recent Nature paper by Flaxman and other Imperial College modellers 1) The transition from rising to declining recorded COVID-19 deaths in the in 11 European countries that they studied imply that transmission of COVID-19 must have reduced substantially. The study was nicholaslewis.org

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12.https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3588 “general social distancing was also projected to reduce the number of cases but increase the total number of deaths compared with social distancing of over 70 only” “Strategies that minimise deaths involve the infected fraction primarily being in the

Effect of school closures on mortality from coronavirus disease 2019: old and new predictions Objective To replicate and analyse the information available to UK policymakers when the lockdown decision was taken in March 2020 in the United Kingdom. Design Independent calculations using the CovidSim code, which implements Imperial College London’s individual based model, with data available in March 2020 applied to the coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) epidemic. Setting Simulations considering the spread of covid-19 in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Population About 70 million simulated people matched as closely as possible to actual UK demographics, geography, and social behaviours. Main outcome measures Replication of summary data on the covid-19 epidemic reported to the UK government Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), and a detailed study of unpublished results, especially the effect of school closures. Results The CovidSim model would have produced a good forecast of the subsequent data if initialised with a reproduction number of about 3.5 for covid-19. The model predicted that school closures and isolation of younger people would increase the total number of deaths, albeit postponed to a second and subsequent waves. The findings of this study suggest that prompt interventions were shown to be highly effective at reducing peak demand for intensive care unit (ICU) beds but also prolong the epidemic, in some cases resulting in more deaths long term. This happens because covid-19 related mortality is highly skewed towards older age groups. In the absence of an effective vaccination programme, none of the proposed mitigation strategies in the UK would reduce the predicted total number of deaths below 200 000. Conclusions It was predicted in March 2020 that in response to covid-19 a broad lockdown, as opposed to a focus on shielding the most vulnerable members of society, would reduce immediate demand for ICU beds at the cost of more deaths long term. The optimal strategy for saving lives in a covid-19 epidemic is different from that anticipated for an influenza epidemic with a different mortality age profile. bmj.com

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low risk younger age groups—for example, focusing stricter social distancing measures on care homes where people are likely to die rather than schools where they are not.” “results presented in the report suggested that the addition of interventions restricting younger people

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might actually increase the total number of deaths from covid-19”

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13.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.20047860v3 “We show that [lockdown] is modestly superior in saving lives compared to [focused protection], but with tremendous costs to prevent one case of death. This might result in overwhelming economic effects that are expected to increase future death toll”

Modeling social distancing strategies to prevent SARS-CoV2 spread in Israel- A Cost-effectiveness analysis medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences medrxiv.org

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14.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2652751/ “For pathogens that inflict greater morbidity at older ages, interventions that reduce but do not eliminate exposure can paradoxically increase the number of cases of severe disease by shifting the burden of infection toward older individuals”

Too Little of a Good Thing A Paradox of Moderate Infection Control Epidemic theory dictates that a reduction in the force of infection by a pathogen is associated with an increase in the average age at which individuals are exposed. For those pathogens that cause more severe disease among hosts of an older age, interventions ... ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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15.https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3607803 “Current policy can be misdirected and can therefore have long and even short-term negative effects on human welfare and thus result in not actually minimizing death rates (incorporating externalities), especially in the long run.”

Smart Thinking, Lockdown and COVID-19: Implications for Public Policy The response to COVID-19 has been overwhelmingly to lockdown much the world’s economies in order to minimize death rates as well as the immediate negative effec papers.ssrn.com

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16.https://imgcdn.larepublica.co/cms/2020/05/21180548/JP-Morgan.pdf “For example, the data…shows a decrease in infection rates after countries eased...lockdowns with >99% statistical significance. Indeed...infection rates have declined after reopening even after allowing for an appropriate measurement lag.

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This means that the pandemic and COVID-19 likely have its own dynamics unrelated to often inconsistent lockdown measures that were being implemented.”

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17.https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768086 “restrictions imposed by the pandemic (eg, stay-at-home orders) could claim lives indirectly through delayed care for acute emergencies, exacerbations of chronic diseases, and psychological distress (eg, drug overdoses).” “In 14 states, more than 50%

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of excess deaths were attributed to underlying causes other than COVID-19; these included California (55% of excess deaths) and Texas (64% of excess deaths)"

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18.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.09.20210146v3 “We found that 180-day of mandatory isolations to healthy <60 (ie schools and workplaces closed) produces more final deaths if the vaccination date is later than (Madrid: Feb 23 2021; Catalonia: Dec 28 2020; Paris: Jan 14 2021; London: Jan 22 2021)”

SARS-CoV-2 waves in Europe: A 2-stratum SEIRS model solution medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences medrxiv.org

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19.https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665588 “Comparing weekly mortality in 24 European countries, the findings in this paper suggest that more severe lockdown policies have not been associated with lower mortality. In other words, the lockdowns have not worked as intended”

Did Lockdown Work? An Economist’s Cross-Country Comparison I explore the association between the severity of lockdown policies in the first half of 2020 and mortality rates. Using two indices from the Blavatnik Centre’s papers.ssrn.com

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20.https://www.nber.org/papers/w27719 “Our findings … further raise doubt about the importance in NPI’s (lockdown policies in particular) in accounting for the evolution of COVID-19 transmission rates over time and across locations”

Four Stylized Facts about COVID-19 Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals. nber.org

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21.https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3543 “[the] President...has flatly denied the seriousness of the pandemic, refusing to impose a lockdown, close schools, or cancel mass events…Yet the country’s death rate is among the lowest in Europe-just over 700 in a population of 9.5 million”

Covid-19: How does Belarus have one of the lowest death rates in Europe? Plagued by political turmoil over “Europe’s last dictatorship” and with a president in denial of covid-19, how has Belarus ended up with one of the lowest death rates on the continent? Kata Karáth reports Belarus’s beleaguered government remains unfazed by covid-19. President Aleksander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, has flatly denied the seriousness of the pandemic, refusing to impose a lockdown, close schools, or cancel mass events like the Belarusian football league or the Victory Day parade. Yet the country’s death rate is among the lowest in Europe—just over 700 in a population of 9.5 million with over 73 000 confirmed cases. The relatively low death rate is thought to be thanks to Belarus’s large hospital capacity which allowed the country to isolate people early on, says Andrei Vitushka, a healthcare policy expert at the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies in Vilnius, Lithuania. With 11 hospital beds per 1000 people, Belarus outnumbers nations like Germany (8) or the UK (2.5).1 “It’s usually a … bmj.com

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22.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.01.20222315v1 “living with children 0-11 years was not associated with increased risks of recorded SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID-19 related hospital or ICU admission but was associated with reduced risk of COVID-19 death (HR 0.75, 95%CI 0.62-0.92).”

Association between living with children and outcomes from COVID-19: an OpenSAFELY cohort study of 12 million adults in England medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences medrxiv.org

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23.https://pandata.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Exploring-inter-country-variation.pdf “Consistent with observations that .. lockdown has not been observed to effect the rate...of the country reproduction rates significantly, our analysis suggests there is no basis for expecting lockdown stringency to be an explanatory variable”

Page not found - PANDA pandata.org

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24.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.04.20168112v1#:~:text=The%20seroprevalence%20of%20COVID%2D19,care%20workers%20in%20Niger%20State. “This study shows that the virus is already here, and we must find ways of living with it such that it caused no or minimal human and socioeconomic losses in ... Nigeria as a whole…. going back to the lockdown should never again be entertained”

Seroprevalence of COVID-19 in Niger State medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences medrxiv.org

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25.https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2029717 “recruits were under the constant supervision of Marine Corps instructors. Other settings in which young adults congregate are unlikely to reflect similar adherence to measures intended to reduce transmission."

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26.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.604339/full “The national criteria most associated with death rate are life expectancy and its slowdown, public health context (metabolic and non-communicable diseases (NCD) burden vs. infectious diseases prevalence), economy (growth national product, financial

Covid-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation Context The human development territories have been severely constrained under the Covid-19 pandemic. A common dynamics has been observed, but its propagation has not been homogeneous over each continent. We aimed at characterizing the non-viral parameters that were most associated with death rate. Methods We tested major indices from five domains (demography, public health, economy, politics, environment) and their potential associations with Covid-19 mortality during the first 8 months of 2020, through a Principal Component Analysis and a correlation matrix with a Pearson correlation test. Data of all countries, or states in federal countries, showing at least ten fatality cases, were retrieved from official public sites. For countries that have not yet finished the first epidemic phase, a prospective model has been computed to provide options of death rates evolution. Results Higher Covid death rates are observed in the [25/65°] latitude and in the [-35/-125°] longitude ranges. The national criteria most associated with death rate are life expectancy and its slowdown, public health context (metabolic and non-communicable diseases (NCD) burden vs infectious diseases prevalence), economy (growth national product, financial support), and environment (temperature, ultra-violet index). Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate. Conclusion Countries that already experienced a stagnation or regression of life expectancy, with high income and NCD rates, had the highest price to pay. This burden was not alleviated by more stringent public decisions. Inherent factors have predetermined the Covid-19 mortality: understanding them may improve prevention strategies by increasing population resilience through better physical fitness and immunity. frontiersin.org

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support), and environment (temperature, ultra-violet index). Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate”

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27.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00779954.2020.1844786?journalCode=rnzp20 “Whether a county had a lockdown has no effect on Covid-19 deaths; a non-effect that persists over time. Cross-country studies also find lockdowns are superfluous and ineffective (Homberg 2020). This ineffectiveness may have several causes. "

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28.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resour… “There are no historical observations...that support.. confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods...The negative consequences...are so extreme…this mitigation..should be eliminated from serious consideration”

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29.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.25.20248853v1 “we present data demonstrating that mortality due to covid-19... could have been largely predicted even before the pandemic hit Europe, simply by looking at longitudinal variability of all-cause mortality rates in the years preceding the...outbreak”

Longitudinal variability in mortality predicts Covid-19 deaths medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences medrxiv.org

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30.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.28.20248936v1 “Our analysis shows that while infection levels decreased, they did so before lockdown was effective, and infection numbers also decreased in neighbour municipalities without mandates”

Lockdown Effects on Sars-CoV-2 Transmission – The evidence from Northern Jutland medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences medrxiv.org

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There are of course anecdotal observations as well--e.g., Florida is doing better than California despite DisneyWorld having been open for months and California having no current plan to ever reopen anything, let alone Disneyland. I could do a similar thread on the harms of

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lockdowns (and school closures in particular) but that seems unnecessary as such harms have been well documented. If lockdowns were extremely effective, their desirability from a policy perspective would at least be a conversation worth having. However, these papers suggest they

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have limited effectiveness at best AND horrible side effects. @FatEmperor @kerpen @AlexBerenson @MonicaGandhi9 @ClayTravis @adamcarolla @markgeragos @NickHudsonCT @AJKayWriter @MartinKulldorff @J_GallagherAD3 @KevinKileyCA @pnjaban @justin_hart @RepMcClintock @MichaelYeadon3

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@yinonw @Alex_Washburne @ianmSC @EthicalSkeptic @MLevitt_NP2013 @aginnt @sdbaral @NahasNewman @VPrasadMDMPH @michaeljburry

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31. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84092-1 "After preprocessing the data, 87 regions around the world were included, yielding 3741 pairwise comparisons for linear regression analysis...we were not able to explain if COVID-19 mortality is reduced by staying at home in ~ 98% of the comparisons”

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Stay-at-home policy is a case of exception fallacy: an internet-based ecological study - Scientific Reports A recent mathematical model has suggested that staying at home did not play a dominant role in reducing COVID-19 transmission. The second wave of cases in Europe, in regions that were considered as COVID-19 controlled, may raise some concerns. Our objective was to assess the association between staying at home (%) and the reduction/increase in the number of deaths due to COVID-19 in several regions in the world. In this ecological study, data from www.google.com/covid19/mobility/ , ourworldindata.org and covid.saude.gov.br were combined. Countries with > 100 deaths and with a Healthcare Access and Quality Index of ≥ 67 were included. Data were preprocessed and analyzed using the difference between number of deaths/million between 2 regions and the difference between the percentage of staying at home. The analysis was performed using linear regression with special attention to residual analysis. After preprocessing the data, 87 regions around the world were included, yielding 3741 pairwise comparisons for linear regression analysis. Only 63 (1.6%) comparisons were significant. With our results, we were not able to explain if COVID-19 mortality is reduced by staying at home in ~ 98% of the comparisons after epidemiological weeks 9 to 34. nature.com

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32. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-3025-y "Sweden is worthy of particular attention, given...no lockdown took place.” “Notably, the estimated effectiveness of…[merely a]…public events ban in Sweden is comparable to that of lockdown in the 10 countries in which one was implemented”

The effect of interventions on COVID-19 - Nature nature.com

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33. ssbhalla.org/wp-content/upl… "For the first time in human history, lockdowns were used as a strategy to counter the virus. While conventional wisdom, to date, has been that lockdowns were successful…we find not one piece of evidence supporting this claim.”

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34. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3764553 "on average, mandated behavioral changes accounts for only 9% (median: 0%) of the total effect on the growth of the pandemic stemming from behavioral changes. The remaining 91% (median: 100%) of the effect was due to voluntary behavioral changes”

A First Literature Review: Lockdowns Only Had a Small Effect on COVID-19 How important were the economic lockdowns in the spring of 2020 in curbing the COVID-19 pandemic and how important was lockdown as compared to voluntary changes papers.ssrn.com

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35. https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/11/2/e042034.full.pdf "Potential determinants assessed were…the stringency index, as a measure of country-level response to COVID-19” Results? Shotgun blast (zero correlation):

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36. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.05.20146837v2 "The decline of infections...can be attributed to relatively small interventions & voluntary behavioral changes. Additional effects of later interventions cannot be detected [&]...liberalizations of measures did not induce a re-increase of infections"

Change points in the spread of COVID-19 question the effectiveness of nonpharmaceutical interventions in Germany medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences medrxiv.org

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37. https://www.heritage.org/public-health/report/comparative-analysis-policy-approaches-covid-19-around-the-world "The evidence suggests that, among other important findings, broad lockdown orders that fail to focus primarily on the most vulnerable members of the population—particularly the elderly—have not produced superior outcomes to less restrictive policies”

A Comparative Analysis of Policy Approaches to COVID-19 Around the World, with Recommendations for U.S. Lawmakers The spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, became a serious concern worldwide in March 2020, when on March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) designated COVID-19 to be a pandemic. heritage.org

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38. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01009-0 "measures can substitute for a full lockdown in terms of effectiveness, while reducing adverse impacts on society, the economy, [humanity]” “Less disruptive & costly NPIs can be as effective as more intrusive, drastic, ones (eg, a national lockdown).”

Ranking the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 government interventions - Nature Human Behaviour Assessing the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 is critical to inform future preparedness response plans. Here we quantify the impact of 6,068 hierarchically coded NPIs implemented in 79 territories on the effective reproduction number, Rt, of COVID-19. We propose a modelling approach that combines four computational techniques merging statistical, inference and artificial intelligence tools. We validate our findings with two external datasets recording 42,151 additional NPIs from 226 countries. Our results indicate that a suitable combination of NPIs is necessary to curb the spread of the virus. Less disruptive and costly NPIs can be as effective as more intrusive, drastic, ones (for example, a national lockdown). Using country-specific ‘what-if’ scenarios, we assess how the effectiveness of NPIs depends on the local context such as timing of their adoption, opening the way for forecasting the effectiveness of future interventions. Analysing over 50,000 government interventions in more than 200 countries, Haug et al. find that combinations of softer measures, such as risk communication or those increasing healthcare capacity, can be almost as effective as disruptive lockdowns. nature.com

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39. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.14.20175240v1.full.pdf "The peculiar aspect of the claim that lockdown accounts for 81% of the reduction in R is that Sweden did not implement any lockdown, but still see a similar decrease in R as the other countries”

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40. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.26.20140814v2.full.pdf "It is evident...that the growth of a COVID19 epidemic does not follow an exponential growth law even in the very first days, but instead its growth is slowing down exponentially with time...it is decelerating from the first day"

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41.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.21.20198796v1.full.pdf "Japan took the atypical step of not instituting a mandatory lockdown. During this time, businesses, restaurants, & transportation were kept open, & public life continued relatively unabated. Nevertheless, the second wave peaked and subsided on its own”

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42.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.02.21252734v1.full.pdf "We found no evidence that the shielding program [extreme lockdown] per se reduced COVID rates” “The effectiveness of shielding vulnerable individuals was limited by the inability to control transmission in hospital & from other adults in the household”

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43.https://c2cjournal.ca/2021/03/do-lockdowns-make-a-difference-in-a-pandemic/ "The stay-at-home orders...seem to have made no observable tangible impact on the daily cases & deaths. Further the most severe restrictions, such as prolonged lockdown...in California in Nov, did not prevent the subsequent spike in cases or fatalities"

Do Lockdowns Make a Difference in a Pandemic? | C2C Journal C2C Journal analyzes the effectives of four US states' pandemic policy that had two very different approaches to lockdowns. c2cjournal.ca

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44.https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(21)00036-0/fulltext "governments need to...apply available measures in a way that is much more targeted to different generational groups...; from March to June, 2020, 96% of additional deaths related to COVID-19 in Europe occurred in patients aged older than 70 years."

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45. https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(21)00087-1/fulltext "We demonstrate that effects of NPIs are non-robust and highly sensitive to model specification, assumptions and data employed to fit models." "The model proposing major benefits from lockdown in European countries had the worse fit to the data"

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46.https://www.pnas.org/content/118/15/e2019706118 "Shelter-in-place [SIP] orders had no detectable health benefits, [&] only modest effects on behavior" "We reanalyze 2 prior studies purporting...that SIP orders caused large reductions in disease prevalence & show that those results are not reliable."

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47. https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n608 "of those who reported having experienced symptoms of covid-19 in the past seven days...only 20.2%...said they had not left home since developing symptoms" "Non-adherence was associated with...lower socioeconomic grade...and working in a key sector"

Adherence to the test, trace, and isolate system in the UK: results from 37 nationally representative surveys Objective To investigate rates of adherence to the UK’s test, trace, and isolate system over the initial 11 months of the covid-19 pandemic. Design Series of cross sectional online surveys. Setting 37 nationally representative surveys in the UK, 2 March 2020 to 27 January 2021. Participants 74 699 responses from 45 957 people living in the UK, aged 16 years or older (37 survey waves, about 2000 participants in each wave). Main outcome measures Identification of the main symptoms of covid-19 (cough, high temperature or fever, and loss of sense of smell or taste), self-reported adherence to self-isolation if symptoms were present and intention to self-isolate if symptoms were to develop, requesting a test for covid-19 if symptoms were present and intention to request a test if symptoms were to develop, and intention to share details of close contacts. Results Only 51.5% of participants (95% confidence interval 51.0% to 51.9%, n=26 030/50  570) identified the main symptoms of covid-19; the corresponding values in the most recent wave of data collection (25-27 January 2021) were 50.8% (48.6% to 53.0%, n=1019/2007). Across all waves, duration adjusted adherence to full self-isolation was 42.5% (95% confidence interval 39.7% to 45.2%, n=515/1213); in the most recent wave of data collection (25-27 January 2021), it was 51.8% (40.8% to 62.8%, n=43/83). Across all waves, requesting a test for covid-19 was 18.0% (95% confidence interval 16.6% to 19.3%, n=552/3068), increasing to 22.2% (14.6% to 29.9%, n=26/117) from 25 to 27 January. Across all waves, intention to share details of close contacts was 79.1% (95% confidence interval 78.8% to 79.5%, n=36 145/45 680), increasing to 81.9% (80.1% to 83.6%, n=1547/1890) from 25 to 27 January. Non-adherence was associated with being male, younger age, having a dependent child in the household, lower socioeconomic status, greater financial hardship during the pandemic, and working in a key sector. Conclusions Levels of adherence to test, trace, and isolate are low, although some improvement has occurred over time. Practical support and financial reimbursement are likely to improve adherence. Targeting messaging and policies to men, younger age groups, and key workers might also be necessary. No additional data available. bmj.com

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48.https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3784709"life loss due to lockdowns themselves has never been taken into consideration" "pro-lockdown evidence is shockingly thin & based largely on comparing real-world outcomes against dire computer-generated forecasts derived from empirically untested models"

COVID-19 Library. Filling the Gaps Objectives: The present coronavirus crisis shook the modern world as only the world wars have shaken it before. In this review we analyzed the lockdown-based cr papers.ssrn.com

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49.https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.03.21251112v2.full.pdf "All regions have peak incidence prior to the first lockdown with total incidence for England in decline well before lockdown" "Furthermore all regions have R < 1 by either lockdown, with average R < 1 some days before either lockdown"

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50. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3706464 "social isolation at a given date showed a strong positive correlation to COVID-19 deaths 39 days later" "strong empirical evidence that..adoption of restrictive measures increasing social isolation have worsened the pandemic..instead of mitigating it"

Does Social Isolation Really Curb COVID-19 Deaths? Direct Evidence from Brazil that it Might do the Exact Opposite Objective: To evaluate the association between social isolation, defined as the percentage of individuals who stayed within 450 meters from their usual location papers.ssrn.com

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51. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3782395 "Lockdowns are associated with reduced mortality in ...modelling studies but NOT in studies based on empirical data" "deaths associated with economic harms or underfunding of other health issues may outweigh the deaths that lockdowns save"

COVID-19 Lockdown Policies: An Interdisciplinary Review Lockdown interventions employed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have been evaluated via research at biomedical, economic, psychological, and ethical levels papers.ssrn.com

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52. sfu.ca/~allen/Lockdow… "most of the early [lockdown] cost/benefit studies arrived at conclusions that were refuted later by data" "cumulative deaths per million, & the pattern of daily deaths per million, is not negatively correlated with the stringency of lockdown"

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53. https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/SR243.pdf "shelter-in-place orders did not help stave off achieving higher per capita mortality thresholds (20 deaths per mil) than they helped delay reaching lower levels" "[SIP] orders during this pandemic is tantamount to killing a fly with a sledgehammer"

The Heritage Foundation Since our founding in 1973, The Heritage Foundation has been working to advance the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense. heritage.org

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54. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28737/w28737.pdf?utm_campaign=PANTHEON_STRIPPED&%3Butm_medium=PANTHEON_STRIPPED&%3Butm_source=PANTHEON_STRIPPED "evidence contradicts the public-health ideal in which households would be places of solitary confinement & zero transmission. Instead, the evidence suggests that households show the highest transmission rates & that households are high-risk settings"

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55. https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/15/e2019706118.full.pdf "The previously presented evidence on the effectiveness of SIP orders appears to be misleading, and there is currently no compelling evidence to suggest that SIP policies saved a large number of lives or significantly mitigated the spread of COVID-19"

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56. https://www.covid19.statistik.uni-muenchen.de/pdfs/codag_bericht_16.pdf [German translation]:"With the R-values, there is no direct connection w the taken measures - neither with the lockdown light on 2 November, the tightening on 16 December, or still w the 'Federal Emergency Brake' which was adopted at the end of April"

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57. https://europepmc.org/article/ppr/ppr312490#R2 "the early evening curfew led to more crowding in indoor spaces – which may facilitate the spread of disease. Interventions should be based on a thorough analysis of human behavior, that anticipates substitution of activities"

Covid-19: Early evening curfews are not effective and may backfire - Abstract - Europe PMCEurope PMC Europe PMC is an archive of life sciences journal literature. europepmc.org

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58. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3764553 "there is little doubt that the effect of the lockdowns in spring of 2020 was modest" "economic lockdown...will therefore most often be met by more risky behavior among citizens [&]...be followed by an increase in infections in other parts of society"

A First Literature Review: Lockdowns Only Had a Small Effect on COVID-19 How important were the economic lockdowns in the spring of 2020 in curbing the COVID-19 pandemic and how important was lockdown as compared to voluntary changes papers.ssrn.com

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59. https://www.nber.org/papers/w28930 "we fail to find that [shelter-in-place] SIP policies saved lives. To the contrary, we find a positive association between SIP policies and excess deaths. We find that following the implementation of SIP policies, excess mortality increases"

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Policy Responses on Excess Mortality Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals. nber.org

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60. https://www.dovepress.com/whether-county-lockdown-could-deter-the-contagion-of-covid-19-in-the-u-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-RMHP#cit0021 "We study 3073 Counties...to understand whether lockdown...is an effective approach [and]..reach a conclusion that a county lockdown...plays no important role in containing the spread...This result also echoes other research of invalidity of lockdown"

Efficacy of a lockdown decision for COVID-19 in the USA | RMHP Whether County Lockdown Could Deter the Contagion of COVID-19 in the USA- Read the full article online dovepress.com

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61. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3872861 "the costs of the lockdown are 25 times greater than the benefits, including the cost of an additional 4,536 statistical lives" "Furthermore, each of the individual costs taken on their own are greater than the total benefits of lockdown"

A Cost–Benefit Analysis of the COVID-19 Lockdown in Ireland Since March 12th 2020, the Irish people have endured over 400 days of lockdown restrictions. To this day, the government has failed to present the benefits vers papers.ssrn.com

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62. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.06.21260077v1 "Decreases in mobility were found to increase, rather than decrease case growth rates, consistent with arguments that within-household transmission–resulting from spending more time at residences due to mobility restrictions–may outweigh the benefits"

On the effectiveness of COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns: Pan metron ariston medRxiv - The Preprint Server for Health Sciences medrxiv.org

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63. https://osf.io/s9z2p/ "if NPIs were consistently effective, measures should be anti-correlated with case numbers, i.e., the more stringent the NPIs, the greater the ensuing fall in cases. However...the stringency of NPIs is [instead] partially correlated to case numbers"

A TALE OF TWO SCIENTIFIC PARADIGMS: CONFLICTING SCIENTIFIC OPINIONS ON WHAT “FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE” MEANS FOR SARS-COV-2 AND THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC During the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments have adopted responses revolving around the open-ended use of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), including “lockdowns”, “stay-at-home” orders, travel restrictions, mask-wearing, and regulated social distancing. Initially these were introduced with the stated goals of “flattening the curve” of hospital demand and/or the eradication of the virus from the country (i.e., “zero covid” policies). Over time, these goals have shifted to maintaining sufficient NPIs in place until such time as population-wide vaccination programmes have achieved an appropriate level of herd immunity to allow lifting of these measures without excessive hospital demand. Supporters of this approach have claimed to be “following the science”, insisting that criticism of any aspects of these measures is non-scientific or even “scientific misinformation”. This idea that only one set of scientifically valid opinions on COVID-19 exists has encouraged the media, social media and even scientific journals to suppress and/or dismiss any differing scientific opinions as “erroneous”, “discredited” or “debunked”, resulting in discouragement of open-minded scientific inquiry or discussion. Accordingly, in the current article we identify two distinct scientific paradigms to analysing COVID-19 adopted within the medical and scientific community. Paradigm 1 is primarily model-driven, while Paradigm 2 is primarily empirically-driven. Using these two paradigms we have analysed the epidemiological data for 30 northern hemisphere countries (with a total population of 882 million). Remarkably, we find using each paradigm leads to diametrically opposite conclusions on many policy-relevant issues. We discuss how these conflicting results might be reconciled and provide recommendations for scientists and policymakers. osf.io

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64. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00036846.2021.1955089 "at best, lockdown had no significant impact on net mortalities; and under our..[analysis]...is associated with a significant net increase in mortalities" "a substantial proportion of COVID-19 deaths may be largely invariant to blanket lockdowns"

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65. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.577740/full "lockdowns may have more negative effects than positive effects. [eg] many measures taken in a lockdown aimed at protecting human life may compromise the immune system,& purpose in life, esp. of vulnerable groups...including the ones we aim to protect"

For the Greater Good? The Devastating Ripple Effects of the Covid-19 Crisis As the crisis around Covid-19 evolves, it becomes clear that there are numerous negative side-effects of the lockdown strategies implemented by many countries. Currently, more evidence becomes available that the lockdowns may have more negative effects than positive effects. For instance, many measures taken in a lockdown aimed at protecting human life may compromise the immune system, and purpose in life, especially of vulnerable groups. This leads to the paradoxical situation of compromising the immune system and physical and mental health of many people, including the ones we aim to protect. Also, it is expected that hundreds of millions of people will die from hunger and postponed medical treatments. Other side effects include financial insecurity of billions of people, physical and mental health problems, and increased inequalities. The economic and health repercussions of the crisis will be falling disproportionately on young workers, low-income families and women, and thus exacerbate existing inequalities. As the virus outbreak and media coverage spread fear and anxiety, superstition, cognitive dissonance reduction and conspiracy theories are ways to find meaning and reduce anxiety. These behavioral aspects may play a role in the continuance of lockdown decisions. Based on theories regarding agnotology (i.e. the ways ignorance or doubt about certain topics is created by means of withholding or presenting information in a certain way), social influence, superstition and stress and coping, I seek to explain the social and behavioral aspects of human behavior in times of crises. Both the Covid-19 crisis itself as well as the resulting economic and (mental) health crisis are global problems that may require global solutions. I present a model of drivers and outcomes of lockdown behaviors and offer suggestions and a tool to counteract the negative psychological effects by means of online life crafting therapeutic writing interventions. frontiersin.org

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66. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.14.21258886v1.full.pdf "The majority of the variation in COVID-19 rates between nations is explained by median age, obesity rate, and island status"

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67.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.715904/full "Many studies found that more restrictive lockdowns in diff. international locations were not associated w/any clear effect on 'flattening-the-curve'” "lockdowns cannot markedly reduce transmission as people continue to carry out...essential activities"

The SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic in High Income Countries Such as Canada: A Better Way Forward Without Lockdowns The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has caused tragic morbidity and mortality. In attempt to reduce this morbidity and mortality, most countries implemented population-wide lockdowns. Here we show that the lockdowns were based on several flawed assumptions, including “no one is protected until everyone is protected,” “lockdowns are highly effective to reduce transmission,” “lockdowns have a favorable cost-benefit balance,” and “lockdowns are the only effective option.” Focusing on the latter, we discuss that Emergency Management principles provide a better way forward to manage the public emergency of the pandemic. Specifically, there are three priorities including the following: first, protect those most at risk by separating them from the threat (mitigation); second, ensure critical infrastructure is ready for people who get sick (preparation and response); and third, shift the response from fear to confidence (recovery). We argue that, based on Emergency Management principles, the age-dependent risk from SARS-CoV-2, the minimal (at best) efficacy of lockdowns, and the terrible cost-benefit trade-offs of lockdowns, we need to reset the pandemic response. We can manage risk and save more lives from both COVID-19 and lockdowns, thus achieving far better outcomes in both the short- and long-term. frontiersin.org

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68. https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf "While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic & social costs where they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected"