The Lockdown Fallacy

Japan, Sweden said no

Sweden kept its society open after March 2020 and beat back an epidemic, while rejecting hard lockdowns. So did Japan. That is counter-intuitive for the Canadian public, bombarded as it was by the message that lockdowns were a proven remedy. This was never the case and, as evidence has piled up in recent years, it has become clear that we were rushed into an improvised and risky public-health option.

From the moment Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, public-health agencies presented the public with just one option: total lockdown of their societies. Or in the PR jargon of March 2020: “Two weeks to flatten the curve”.

This was an untested option with many risks. And after almost two years — 102 weeks later — it was clear that lockdowns did not “flatten” the infectious curve as advertised. Nor even slow the spread, as many expected.

To its credit, the United Kingdom (unlike Canada) did have a public debate in March/April 2020. The U.K. discussion focused on the wisdom of closing its entire society. Finally, the Prime Minister chose the lockdown option — largely spurred by apocalyptic scenarios set out by Imperial College London. (These ICL figures were later debunked and withdrawn).

Societies which avoided that shutdown approach, however, did just as well and even better. Since there were a limited number of states that rejected total lockdowns, the experiences of dissident Sweden and lighter-touch Japan are revealing.

A Bloomberg News report in May 2020 noted that Japan rejected the most common lockdown measures (https://tinyurl.com/zdy48nb4 ), and yet did well:

“Japan’s state of emergency is set to end with new cases of the coronavirus dwindling to mere dozens. It got there despite largely ignoring the default playbook.

“No restrictions were placed on residents’ movements, and businesses from restaurants to hairdressers stayed open. No high-tech apps that tracked people’s movements were deployed. The country doesn’t have a center for disease control. And even as nations were exhorted to “test, test, test,” Japan has tested just 0.2% of its population — one of the lowest rates among developed countries.”

In January 2022, a New York Times op-ed on Japan stressed its stability and its low mortality (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/opinion/japan-covid.html ), compared to most Covid-affected societies:

“Although Japan declared certain periods of the pandemic states of emergency, that equated to not much more than strongly worded warnings and some travel restrictions for residents. [….] Drastic measures, such as lockdowns, were never taken because the goal was always to find ways to live with Covid-19. (Japanese law also does not allow for lockdowns, so the country could not have declared them even if we had thought them necessary.)“

More than two years after other countries imposed their 2020 lockdowns, Japan’s Covid mortality rate (297 per million) remained tiny compared to most countries in the world, and a fraction of that of other Pacific island states enforcing hard lockdowns, such as Australia (540) and New Zealand (544).

Japan and Sweden, each a scientific leader in Asia or Europe, acted as placebos in the grand lockdown experiment. They succeeded in raising doubts about the effectiveness of the lockdown “cure”.

While Japan’s policy was not widely publicized in the West, Sweden came under sustained and emotional criticism. It was contended that its Covid infection and death rates would “explode”, as compared to lockdown countries. One Canadian critic contended that “Sweden won’t lead in anything … except deaths”. That did not materialize.

— How did pro-lockdown decisions work out elsewhere ?

Compared to Sweden, not great. By August 2022, British Covid mortality was about 40 per cent higher than in Sweden. Most major states in Europe (10 m+ population) were similarly higher (see bar chart, above). In the broader world, Sweden plunged out of the top-50 most-affected states, with a Covid mortality rate of roughly 1,880 per million, ranking it near Austria.

This was perhaps predictable. As three of the world’s top epidemiologists noted: “Basic epidemiological theory indicates that lockdowns do not reduce the total number of cases in the long run and have never in history led to the eradication of a disease.  At best, lockdowns delay the increase of cases for a finite period and at great cost” (see https://gbdeclaration.org/frequently-asked-questions/ ).

And as Dr Richard Schabas, former chief medical officer of health for Ontario and the official who guided that province through the SARS-Cov-1 epidemic of 2003, has said, lockdowns are “anathema to the basic principles of public health”. They are repressive but ineffective, built on a false analogy that suffocating society leads to the suffocation of an infectious disease ( https://tinyurl.com/bd8brfxk ).

As health statistics become more complete after two years of pandemic, detailed studies are confirming that lockdowns had “little to no effect on Covid-19 mortality”, in the words of Johns Hopkins-based researchers (https://tinyurl.com/yc5rzwe8). Their January 2022 meta-analysis scoured the almost 19,000 studies of Covid-response issues to date, and reduced the most pertinent studies to 34. This core research was then crunched for data relating specifically to the impact of lockdowns on mortality.

Researchers concluded, as stated above, that most early hopes for Covid reduction through lockdowns were wishful thinking and never substantiated in the data.

Today, highlighting the failures of lockdown is one way to ensure that this harmful public-health approach does not reappear in free, civil societies.

Below: a detailed report (from May 2021) on the epidemiological basis for Swedish approach:

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Sweden’s lighter touch a success

(updated May 2021)

Sweden today has everything we want: low daily Covid mortality, kids all safely at school, restaurants and stores widely open and, surprisingly, no mask requirement.

–What is their story?

by David Winch, May 1, 2021

The Covid-19 reports in spring 2021 were startling: the site of Swedish public-health agency FOHM published data showing daily deaths (Avlidna per dag) plunging into the low single-digits, often flirting with zero. With this trend, a threshold was crossed. Sweden’s second wave of Covid, after falling steeply since January, had effectively collapsed.

This trend set the stage for near-zero daily mortality there, just as Sweden experienced throughout summer and fall 2020. Bounces in public-health data have repeatedly confounded forecasters, but Sweden’s Covid trend today is clearly down to its endgame.

After a year of controversy and despite the stern disapproval of many observers, Sweden today is where we all want to be: with very low Covid mortality, children under 16 all at school for in-person classes, stores, restaurants and bars widely open, and no mask-wearing requirement.

 Meanwhile, many locked-down countries across Europe find their Covid epidemic remains stubbornly high. No major EU state, aside from Germany, has clearly beaten Sweden’s results. With the fall of its second wave, Sweden may be entering its Covid endgame.

“Lighter lockdowns” a provocation?

March 2020 was a new experience for everybody. A blank wall. Who knew how to deal with a looming pandemic, as declared by WHO? What should public authorities do?

Experts pointed to historically recent precedents: the 1957-58 Asian flu (H2N2) pandemic was eerily similar. Originating in China, it reportedly killed 1.1 million people worldwide, including as many as 150,000 in France and 116,000 in the U.S. before petering out in 1958. (There was no second wave.) The Hong Kong (H3N2) flu, a subsequent and related virus, killed roughly 34,000 Americans in 1968-69. ( Eerie parallels from the 1957 Asian flu – The Washington Post )

More recently, the great influenza epidemic of 2018 may have killed as many Americans as the Vietnam and Korean wars combined (death tolls between 50,000 and 100,000 are cited), yet the U.S. general population barely seemed to notice. No general quarantines, no social lockdown and, for travellers, no closed American borders.

But this felt different. In early 2020, doomsday forecasts proliferated, notably those of Imperial College London; these predicted millions of deaths in the U.S. alone, were it not to follow a hard-quarantine model. Leaders took fright; the U.K. backed down from its proposed lighter-lockdown approach. The cycle of endless lockdowns to fight Covid began.

Amid the cacophony of international distress, Sweden quietly declined the lockdown option. This decision was not without its critics. The world media, with some notable exceptions, embraced pro-lockdown positions and never adjusted them long enough to look dispassionately at Sweden.

— After all, if lockdowns were the epidemiological answer, how could anyone possibly question  them?

Epidemiology mavericks: genesis of a policy

In the absence of a vaccine, epidemiologists in Sweden planned for the long term. Lockdowns were obviously not sustainable, they reasoned, and would not be effective. Lockdowns would just suppress and prolong an epidemic, rather than resolve it. Locking your doors against a physical threat is one thing; against a virus, another. “The virus is here”, said chief epidemiologist Dr. Anders Tegnell, in a deceptively pointed observation.

Dr. Tegnell, the independent public official who has piloted this policy since March 2020, became a lockdown skeptic, along with emeritus epidemiologist Dr. Johan Giesecke, a senior WHO consultant. In April 2020, at the peak of the first wave, Dr. Giesecke was featured in a 35-minute interview on Lockdown TV where he, a reassuring  grandfatherly figure, sounded relentlessly sensible: Why lockdowns are the wrong policy – Swedish expert Prof. Johan Giesecke – YouTube

Public support in a cohesive society like Sweden was a huge plus. Citizens were asked to follow an iconoclastic life-and-death option. Yet they remained firm all year. (In December 2020, despite ups and downs in a pluralist democracy, Dr. Tegnell polled a 65 per cent national approval rating.) Rumours of Tegnell’s repudiation or ouster proved baseless.

Economic and social distress

In spring 2020, totally closing economies had a massive impact: in some North American business sectors, such as restaurant services, unemployment was forced up to 80 per cent for low-wage workers. Production and consumer spending were forced down by 30 per cent. By April 2020 the US had lost, at least temporarily, over 20 million jobs. A deflationary spiral threatened; oil was soon priced below $0 a barrel. The Canadian federal deficit ballooned to over $300 billion, in part to pay people not to work, or to subsidize companies to employ them but with no production. A depression seemed possible.

Gradually, in spring 2020, my concerns about the economic and public-health costs (social isolation, depression, addictions, suicides) of lockdowns led to me to examine the Swedish approach. Schools, restaurants, shops – in short, society – were staying open. Suddenly, I had company in my fears about the risks of suffocating civil society.

 Sweden did restrict certain key sectors, and dutifully adopted WHO-endorsed policies of handwashing and social distancing. But otherwise, it was not panicked by this novel coronavirus. Many independent-minded Swedes were quietly pleased with their new reputation as contrarians.

Sweden’s economy has also been much less damaged than elsewhere. Its GDP fell by only 2-3 per cent and, by some accounts, not at all. This slowdown was followed by a sharp rebound: Swedish Economy Grows In Q4 | Markets Insider (businessinsider.com)

Compare to this to the vertiginous 20 per cent plunge of the economy in the locked-down United Kingdom. And bustling central Stockholm today is a stark contrast to the blasted downtown of Montreal, with its multitude of abandoned stores and restaurants.

Media skeptics dominate debate

As the Covid year unfolded, Sweden was often portrayed in the world media as a plucky but doomed outsider, and tut-tutting op-eds treated the Swedes like careless kids stupidly walking along railroad tracks. In truth, their policy seemed at times to have failed. As late as July 2020 the country ranked sixth or seventh on world mortality tables. Media hecklers were loud and numerous, including critics from the liberal left, who are normally enthralled by Swedish health policies.

But Sweden plunged out of the world’s top-30 on mortality/million tables well before the pandemic’s end (June 2021).  Among major states in Western Europe, Sweden’s mortality (1,375) ranked far below long-time EU death-rate leader Belgium (2,110 deaths/million), but also behind locked-down Italy, United Kingdom, Spain and France.

WORLD COVID DEATH RATES

 Covid mortality/per million population (data through June 10,  2021)

Sources: CDC, WHO, EDC, Johns Hopkins (as compiled at polling-data, statistics and news-aggregator site RealClearPolitics: https://tinyurl.com/Covid-mortality-states )

Intellectual pushback starts against lockdowns

By summer 2020, Sweden, no longer a provocative oddity, was doing visibly better than major European countries which had forcibly closed their societies.

As the pandemic year staggered along, the anti-lockdown cause steadily gained supporters. In May 2020, WHO itself had endorsed Sweden’s lighter touch as the least-damaging approach: WHO says Sweden’s Corona strategy could be “a future model” post lockdowns – Radio Sweden | Sveriges Radio

This intellectual tide rose slowly, and a debate was gradually launched. In the U.S., former NY Times writer @AlexBerenson became a Twitter magnet and an Amazon bestseller for his relentlessly skeptical anti-lockdown message. Many conservative commentators also loudly dissented. (Oddly, historically social-democratic Sweden became the darling of some right-leaning pundits.)  But such lockdown skeptics were outliers, easily dismissed as crackpots or anti-social cranks. That was to change as more medical professionals dissented.

In October 2020, the anti-lockdown argument finally established its intellectual beachhead. A manifesto launched by three top epidemiologists at Oxford, Harvard and Stanford universities argued that lockdowns did more harm than good: “Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.”

Its FAQs resumed this stance emphatically: “Basic epidemiological theory indicates that lockdowns do not reduce the total number of cases in the long run and have never in history led to the eradication of a disease.  At best, lockdowns delay the increase of cases for a finite period and at great cost. “ Frequently asked Questions – Great Barrington Declaration (gbdeclaration.org)

As of March 2021, more than 55,000 MDs and public health scientists had signed and endorsed the declaration (see sidebar, Great Barrington Declaration in 5 “quotes”). Similarly, in Canada a former chief medical officer gained an audience for his warnings about the social and health damages incurred by the lockdown approach: https://tinyurl.com/Schabas-interview .

And crucially, the doom-saying forecasts of world Covid deaths offered in 2020 by Imperial College London had been thoroughly discredited by statistical analyses, notably as they regarded Sweden : https://www.aier.org/article/the-failure-of-imperial-college-modeling-is-far-worse-than-we-knew/ .

Not a ‘Wild West’

The world media, with few exceptions, remained curious but skeptical about Sweden. British tabloids ran predictable sky-is-falling reports – ironic, given their locked-down country’s dire epidemiological straits. The New York Times, normally sympathetic to progressive Swedish social policies — but also strongly committed to lockdowns in the U.S. — ran several pieces in summer and fall 2020 slamming the lighter-lockdown approach in Sweden, and predicting disaster.

But when the sky did not fall there, the NYT reversed course and offered a realistic account of the country’s strengths and limits. As one report concluded, after its first wave, Sweden “seems to have the scourge controlled”: Vilified Early Over Lax Virus Strategy, Sweden Seems to Have Scourge Controlled – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Similarly, The Economist published in November 2020 a reasonable and detailed discussion of the pluses and minuses of the lighter-lockdown approach. Sweden was not, it concluded, a Wild West of Covid recklessness. The Economist outlined the WHO-recommended public-health practices that Sweden scrupulously observed. Practical health policies during an epidemic led to an open and healthy society: Land of the mask-free – The real lessons from Sweden’s approach to covid-19 | Leaders | The Economist

The ‘lockdown’ that wasn’t

But many in the world media seemed eager to see the Swedish approach repudiated. A spate of “Sweden changes its course”/ ”abandons its experiment” headlines started appearing after September 2020 when the country, in anticipation of a second wave then rising in Europe, announced some restrictions on gatherings: Sweden moves away from no-lockdown gambit as COVID-19 cases spike (msn.com)

The restrictions cited were mostly sensible administrative provisions. For example, while restaurants were free to remain open – and the great majority did — they could only seat eight people at a time, in a maximum of two tables of four. Public gatherings were capped at 20. In December, high schools were moved to online learning for two weeks before Christmas break, before reopening as usual with in-person classes on Jan. 6.

Shops remain open, but ample space is required for social distancing: “Shops, gyms, indoor sports facilities, and swimming facilities must calculate the number of visitors so that each person is given ten square meters of space”: Restrictions and prohibitions – Krisinformation.se

These limits did not impose “lockdowns”, nor rescind the broadly open Swedish economy. Nothing in Sweden compares, for example, to the shuttered societies of Britain or France, with their curfews and mass confinement. Bloomberg News reviewed the evidence and concluded that Sweden remained broadly open: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-29/why-sweden-has-tightened-its-light-touch-covid-rules-quicktake

To add to the Nordic-libertarian mix, the pugnacious Dr. Tegnell repeatedly refused to impose mask-wearing, calling it unproven and likely “ineffective”:  Sweden’s Anders Tegnell on how to defeat coronavirus: No masks, open schools | Fortune

Provocative but effective strategy

Provocative, yes. Unorthodox, yes. But an anti-Covid strategy now paying dividends.

Sweden has prompted hostility because it defied the world’s rushed pro-lockdown consensus. Nobody wants all their schools, stores and restaurants closed. But how could any country possibly beat the virus without following the crowd? The Western public wanted to be reassured that there was no scientific alternative. If lockdowns were the one and only option, any dissenting view could be ridiculed and discredited.

But Sweden today has a reply to those naysayers: there IS an alternative to hard lockdowns. And our country proved it.

Bravo!

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Sidebar:

The Great Barrington Declaration

Great Barrington Declaration (gbdeclaration.org)

Five key quotes from the anti-lockdown manifesto launched by university epidemiologists in October 2020:

“Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. “

“Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19.”

“For children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza.”

“Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold.”

“Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume.”

Annex

FOHM Swedish public-health data site (03/21)

@DavidWinchEditorial, 2021 ________________________