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Home / Opinion / Columns / Lockdowns don't work. It remains a mystery as to why the world entered one

Lockdowns don’t work. It

remains a mystery as to why the
world entered one
Surjit S Bhalla writes: Lockdowns were an unnatural experiment and, around
the world, they have not worked in achieving their major health objective of
less infections or slower pace of infections.

Written by Surjit S Bhalla | Updated: October 24, 2020 9:13:18 am

 SUNDAY LONG REA
Of Jinnah, wo
slums, and m

January 22 was the rst unnatural experiment — Wuhan, China entered into a lockdown. (Illustration by
C R Sasikumar)

It is now slightly more than 300 days since COVID-19 exploded on an unsuspecting
and unprepared world. The second wave is upon us and we are again faced with
Lenin’s existential but practical question: “What is to be done?” The previous time
around, in mid-March, epidemiological experts advised whoever was willing to
listen, and the world did listen with rapt attention, that schools, businesses, etc.
should close shop and the virus will be contained.

January 22 was the first unnatural experiment — Wuhan, China entered into a
lockdown. On March 10, Italy went into a lockdown, and, over the next month, the
world followed.

On the advice of experts, the world confronted the virus in an unprecedented

manner — closures of schools and workplaces and lockdowns became
commonplace. The effectiveness, or lack thereof, of lockdowns in containing the
spread of the virus is examined in a detailed paper entitled, “Lockdowns vs.
COVID19: Covid Wins”, a preliminary version of which is available on my website
ssbhalla.org. Herewith, some highlights about the lockdown crisis that deserve
mention.
WHO director Tedros Adhanom said as early as March 11 that history does not have
a precedent for controlling a pandemic. Yet, lockdowns were recommended. By end
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March, 170 countries had closed their borders, 140 countries had several WHO
containment measures, as compiled by OxGRT (border closures, restrictions on Of Jinnah, wo
slums, and m
gatherings, etc) in place, and there were 8,81,000 COVID-19 cases and 43,000 deaths.
With lockdowns, cases were expected to reach their terminal level, perhaps, 10
times higher at 8.8 million? Today, cases are 40 times, and deaths 24 times higher.
This has occurred during the most intense period of lockdowns and controls around
the world. These are not statistics about even partial success; rather, indicators of
massive failure.

The world has gone through many pandemics since the Spanish Flu of 1918. In the
six month October 1957-March 1958 period, excess deaths in the US numbered
62,000. In the three-month February-April period in 1963, excess deaths numbered
57,000. In these two instances, excess deaths were 36 and 30 per cent higher than
“normal”. In the US, at the peak of the crisis March-May, excess deaths were
1,22,300 and COVID-19 deaths around 9,50,00. Expected deaths —around 6,60,000,
so excess deaths about 18 per cent. Eighteen per cent too many deaths, but what did
the US do to confront the nearly double excess death crisis in both 1957-58 and
1963?

It did absolutely nothing. It is worth quoting a paper by David Henderson and his
colleagues, published in 2009 — Public Health and Medical Responses to the 1957-
58 Influenza Epidemic. The late Dr Henderson had a major responsibility for setting
up the CDC influenza surveillance programme in the US: His stature as an authority
was similar to Anthony Fauci today. The paper explicitly rejects even partial
lockdowns and states:

“The 1957-58 pandemic was such a rapidly spreading disease that it became quickly
apparent to US health officials that efforts to stop or slow its spread were futile.
Thus, no efforts were made to quarantine individuals or groups, and a deliberate
decision was made not to cancel or postpone large meetings such as conferences,
church gatherings, or athletic events for the purpose of reducing transmission.”
(Public Health and Medical Responses.., p. 7, emphasis added)
Editorial | The wrong dose: By making vaccine a manifesto promise, BJP in
Bihar gives a self-serving response to a grave public health emergency
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More evidence against the unexpected and unprecedented world and WHO Of Jinnah, wo
response to the crisis in 2020 is provided in this 91-page 2019 WHO report entitled slums, and m

“Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of
epidemic and pandemic influenza”. The word “lockdown” (one form of a non-
pharmaceutical intervention or NPI) does not appear in this report. Nor does the
WHO report even recommend masks (a favourite 2020 NPI) in case of an epidemic,
though it does advocate their use for symptomatic individuals.

On the effect of NPIs, the report stated: “The evidence base on the effectiveness of
NPIs in community settings is limited, and the overall quality of evidence was very
low for most interventions. There have been a number of high-quality randomised
controlled trials (RCTs) demonstrating that personal protective measures such as
hand hygiene and face masks have, at best, a small effect on influenza
transmission, although higher compliance in a severe pandemic might improve
effectiveness” (emphasis added). Yet, for COVID-19, NPIs were recommended in
bundles by WHO and other experts.

As is universally acknowledged, the WHO is the apex body for advice and guidance
for health problems. It houses leading epidemiological experts and before COVID,
they were advocating policies reminiscent of earlier confrontations with viruses.

Given this history, it remains a mystery as to why the world entered into a
lockdown. In my paper, I report the result of various studies on the effectiveness of
lockdowns; except for a few, most of these studies report that the lockdowns were
highly successful in saving hundreds of thousands of lives. Since the average death
rate from COVID is 2.5 per cent, these results imply that somewhere between 10 to
20 million less infections resulted from this unnatural experiment.

Opinion | A pandemic of failures: State has tried to hide its shortcomings

during the health crisis by resorting to heavy-handed measures

Examination of the contradiction between the observed reality of 40 million cases,

and the experimental reality of lockdown research, is the purpose of my above-
mentioned paper. We replicate the variety of tests available in the literature and
add the following important test of lockdowns — a before-and-after comparison for
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over 150 countries, and for one, two, and three months from the date of lockdowns.
No matter what the test, the dominant result is that not only lockdowns were not Of Jinnah, wo
slums, and m
effective, but that, in a large majority of cases, lockdowns were counter-productive
i.e. led to more infections, and deaths, than would have been the case with no
lockdowns. My analysis stops in end-July and, therefore, ignores the post-July
second wave of infections. If these data are included, the fate of lockdowns would
be a lot worse.

My analysis makes a small contribution towards documenting what did not work.
Unfortunately, there are no answers to the question of what would have worked in
confronting a virus without a vaccine. Note that in the late 1950s, influenza
vaccines were available in the US and yet excess deaths were higher than the 2020
episode of no vaccine.

It is not as if no scientist forecast that lockdowns would be a disaster. Sweden, for

one, followed the herd-immunity approach, the same approach that was followed
by the US (and all other nations) in all previous epidemics. An epidemic is like an
earthquake — it hits you hard, and then you do the best you can, and live with it.

John Ioannidis, professor of medicine at Stanford University, has shouted himself

hoarse against the advocates of lockdown. In a short piece (with colleagues, entitled
‘Forecasting for COVID-19 has failed’), they write: “Failure in epidemic forecasting is
an old problem. In fact, it is surprising that epidemic forecasting has retained much
credibility among decision-makers, given its dubious track record. Modelling for
swine flu predicted 3,100-65,000 deaths in the UK… Eventually only 457 deaths
occurred.” Another example of prediction failure: Up to 10 million animals were
slaughtered because 1,50,000 deaths were expected from foot-and-mouth disease —
eventually only 50 deaths occurred.

It is likely that post-COVID, epidemiological experts will suffer a worse fate than
economists did after their Waterloo in 2008. In the iconic movie Jerry Maguire, a
talented player asks his agent to “show him the money” in order to retain the
contract to manage him. The world is now asking the lockdown experts — show me
the evidence.
This article first appeared in the print edition on October 24, 2020 under the title
‘Lockdowns don’t work’. The writer is executive director, IMF, representing India,
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Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan. The views expressed are those of the author and Of Jinnah, wo
do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF slums, and m

management.

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