What Are the Negative Effects of COVID-19 Lockdowns?
A year into the pandemic, what can we really say about government interventions to prevent disease?
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have been telling a single story. It’s a very compelling narrative, playing into our worst fears and greatest hopes about the pandemic, and it has inspired numerous politicians, scientists, and other experts to try and take action.
The story is simple: the pandemic might be bad, but lockdowns must be worse.
Some have approached this account with some objectivity, and tried to argue that despite the incredible harms of an uncontrolled global pandemic lockdowns are more harmful. Many have, instead, tried to downplay the harms of the pandemic and pretend that it never happened, which has resulted in some truly bizarre arguments about whether people were even actually getting sick (spoiler: they were).
But after 12 months and a huge amount of data, we can now actually take a look at the harms of government interventions against COVID-19, and see whether they have been a tragedy or a triumph.
