Lockdowns Are Less Harmful Than Covid-19

Why the evidence suggests that government interventions are not worse than the pandemic itself

Pictured: A road. It’s symbolic, probably. Source: Pexels

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, people across the world have been thrown into a seesaw of restrictions and ongoing epidemics of the disease. We have all been faced, over and over again, with a terrible choice: do something, and potentially cause harm, or do nothing, and let the disease run riot.

It has been, as they say, quite a year.

Ah stock photos, you never fail to be spectacularly pink. Source: Pexels

Now, the problem with this dichotomy is that it inevitably leads to the question — does intervening against Covid-19 cause more damage than the disease itself? Are lockdowns more harmful than coronavirus? Is, as the colloquial saying goes, the cure worse than the disease?

I’ve previously written about this in an article, where I looked at some of the evidence mixed with my opinions, and argued that it’s pretty hard to know. However, as this was just a blog post that I wrote in my own time, it had some obvious shortcomings — I don’t know everything, and there’s obviously evidence that I missed in a short piece.