In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the governments on the planet implemented a policy that was never implemented in previous pandemics. The non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) colloquially as lockdowns most commonly included stay-at-home orders (alternatively known as shelter-in-place orders), but also encompassed such regulations that restricted movement as curfews and quarantines. Per the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC), the purpose of these lockdowns was to limit or prevent person-to-person contact in order to reduce transmission of COVID-19.
Earlier this year, researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that the lockdowns did next to nothing to help with the spread of COVID-19. When I conducted a literature review of lockdowns in mid-2021, I came across multiple studies, the most intriguing of which being from researchers at the University of Southern California and RAND Corporation. These researchers found that each week of implementing a shelter-in-place order translated into a 2.7 percent increase in excess deaths (Agrawal et al., 2021).
As more data are generated and analyzed, it becomes clearer that the lockdowns did little to no good while causing considerable harm. As recent as last week I wrote about how delaying preventative care as part of the lockdown response has caused an uptick in cancer. In an attempt to distance themselves from the havoc they advocated for in 2020, the Lockdown Lovers who were all in favor of lockdowns are leaning on the argument of "We didn't know at the time." The Atlantic published an article in October declaring a "pandemic amnesty" claiming uncertainty as a justification in implementing pandemic regulations.
Such an argument is an example of an argumentum ad ignorantium (argument from ignorance or appeal to ignorance), which is a logical fallacy that argues that something must be true [or false] simply because it has not been proven false. This can be used by theists or atheists alike to posit that a higher power does or does not exist. In the case of lockdowns, a pro-argument lockdown used in 2020 was along the lines of "You cannot disprove the effectiveness of lockdowns. We do not know that lockdowns do not work. Try to prove me wrong." This appeal to ignorance was combined with the argument of "we have to do something." As I pointed out earlier this year, this second argument is the logical fallacy of the Politician's Syllogism.
The Lockdown Lovers sidestepped these logical fallacies by leaning into the precautionary principle like no other. The precautionary principle states one should take preventative measures to mitigate suspected or potential risk. The precautionary principle is not code for "every time something scares you, do the most radical thing humanly possible to placate your fears." Imagine if we applied this excessiveness consistently to other areas of our lives. As I pointed out in October 2021, we would have some strange life choices and policy results. We would ban automobiles to prevent vehicle deaths and accidents. We would either mandate muzzled dogs or put down dogs to prevent dog attacks. We would mandate exercise or ban all sorts of foods to prevent cardiovascular disease, the number one killer in this country. We do not go to such extremes when it comes to risk aversion. We learn to tolerate and assess risk instead of thinking we could live in a risk-free world.
I would contend that the point of the precautionary principle is to take a measured approach to avoid causing considerable harm. The precautionary principle slices both ways because it would mean that we do not implement policy that will surely wreck lives, much like the lockdowns succeeded all too well in doing. Yet none of that mattered to the Lockdown Lover crowd because the fear of COVID-19 was all-consuming and one-sided to the point of ignoring any of the lockdown's costs. If the Lockdown Lovers understood at the time that there was potential catastrophic harm by implementing lockdowns, they would have abandoned the precautionary principle for a wiser approach to risk management (e.g., the proportionality principle).
The bastardization of the precautionary principle does not touch upon the best argument of them all: we were far from ignorant about the effects of lockdowns. The debate about lockdowns is not a matter of "hindsight is 20/20" or lacking foresight. We had previous epidemiological knowledge and pandemic guidance to help us. Johns Hopkins University (JHU) is considered a premier school for medical research. In September 2019, JHU's pandemic preparedness study (p. 57) had the following to say about quarantines:
In the context of a high-impact respiratory pathogen, quarantine may be the least likely NPI to be effective in controlling the spread due to high transmissibility.
Just weeks before COVID was discovered in Wuhan, the World Health Organization published its pandemic guidance (p. 16) that recommended the following about lockdowns:
Home quarantine of exposed individuals to reduce transmission is not recommended because there is no obvious rationale for this measure, and there would be considerable difficulties in implementing it.
The 2019 pandemic recommendations from Johns Hopkins and the World Health Organization [WHO] came from sound epidemiological theory and practice. It is not as if the COVID-19 pandemic were the first pandemic in human history. Not only have there have been multiple pandemics, but there have been pandemics with a higher death rate than COVID-19, whether that was the Black Death, the Spanish Flu, or the Plague of Justinian.
We as a species have dealt with worse pandemics and survived without ever having to isolate the healthy and asymptomatic. We did not have to implement the largest social experiment in human history to find out that the likelihood of mitigating transmission was very low and the policy of lockdown comes with high costs. Sweden very much understood the epidemiology behind the JHU and WHO recommendations. Sweden followed standard epidemiological practice to the best of its ability, which included not implementing lockdowns. Guess what? Instead of being the basket-case that Lockdown Lovers were anticipating, Sweden ended up faring quite well.
Aside from lockdowns being harmful, this illustrates the ridiculousness of the argument for lockdowns. We do not set aside previously acquired knowledge simply because something is slightly different from what we are accustomed to. Do we not drive a minivan because it is different from a coupe or sedan? No, we learn the differences between the vehicles, get a feel for the minivan, and drive.
There are hundreds of coronaviruses, but only seven known to affect humans. The two famous coronaviruses were SARS and MERS. Scientists did not reject what was known about coronaviruses at that point and panic because of it was supposedly a "novel virus." They took that knowledge and applied that to vaccine development. As a result of that knowledge, they were able to accelerate and streamline the COVID vaccine development timeline to the point of breaking the previous record for shortest time to produce a vaccine (that was the mumps vaccine at four years). We also had information and research on upper respiratory diseases more generally that could have provided better guidance in lockdowns and other COVID restrictions than the knee-jerk precautionary principle on steroids that many countries selected.
As for this blog, I did not discard readily available data, findings, or rationale. I did have some in my personal life try to argue that my opposition to lockdowns was only a matter of hindsight. That was far from being the case. I took the research and analysis skills I learned in my graduate program in public policy. I then combined those skills with foresight to explain why lockdowns would most likely be a poor life choice for society. I had first expressed my concerns about lockdowns less than a week before the lockdowns were implemented in the United States. The following month, I used polling and mobility data to argue that people did not need government mandates to voluntarily partake in social distancing. Fortunately, subsequent data vindicated me in my argument that voluntary social distancing was adequate. In May 2020, I listed reasons why the lockdowns would end up being problematic and harmful to millions.
When looking at any form of public policy, we do not discard previously acquired information, data, or findings. If we are in a situation with certain unknowns, we are supposed to take what we know and make the best decision with what we have available. Most governments did not do that with the lockdowns. There was pandemic guidance in place in the event that such an unfortunate event transpired. Did we as a society "follow the science?" We most certainly did not. There was no risk assessment or cost-benefit analysis conducted prior to implementing a policy of such a magnitude. The playbooks with evidence-based epidemiology were tossed aside and replaced by superstition and sheer panic.
After the Fukushima nuclear accident, three economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research warned about taking the precautionary principle too far (Neidell et al., 2019). What these economists showed is that by shutting down nuclear power plants in response to the nuclear accident, heating prices increased. It ended up reducing the amount of heat that the Japanese people could afford, which in turn caused more deaths than the nuclear accident itself.
The verdict is still out on lockdowns because data are still being collected on the full extent of their impact. Even so, we are already seeing a phenomenon similar the the Fukushima nuclear accident. In an attempt to prevent the spread of COVID, we implemented lockdowns. What is becoming clearer over time is that the cure of lockdowns was worse than the disease. Much like I did last week with the topic of postponed preventative care, I hope to cover various lockdown costs as more data are collected and disseminated.
In the interim, I will say this. Ignorance was no excuse to implement something as detrimental and brutal as lockdowns. It was even less acceptable when government leaders ignored already-available epidemiological data and recommendations. The lockdowns were a moral, economic, and epidemiological failing, plain and simple. The lockdowns of 2020 should not only be used as a cautionary tale about the folly of lockdown specifically, but also about how fear can get the better of us. I hope that we as a society are more attentive and think twice the next time government officials declare something an emergency.
