30 studies since March 2020 finding COVID lockdowns had little or no efficacy

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1349478824606502912.html

Studies since March 2020. Below are 30 published papers finding that lockdowns had little or no efficacy (despite unconscionable harms) along with a key quote or two from each: 
5.arxiv.org/pdf/2005.02090…

“the decline in infections in England…began before full lockdown…[S]uch a scenario would be consistent with…Sweden, which began its decline in fatal infections shortly after the UK, but did so on the basis of measures well short of full lockdown” 

6.datascienceassn.org/sites/default/…

“the UK lockdown was both superfluous (it did not prevent an otherwise explosive behavior of the spread of the coronavirus) and ineffective (it did not slow down the death growth rate visibly).” 

“since the full lockdown strategies are shown to have no impact on the epidemic’s slowdown, one should consider their potentially high inherent death toll as a net loss of human lives” 
12.bmj.com/content/371/bm…

“general social distancing was also projected to reduce the number of cases but increase the total number of deaths compared with social distancing of over 70 only”

“Strategies that minimise deaths involve the infected fraction primarily being in the 

low risk younger age groups—for example, focusing stricter social distancing measures on care homes where people are likely to die rather than schools where they are not.”

“results presented in the report suggested that the addition of interventions restricting younger people 

might actually increase the total number of deaths from covid-19” 
14.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

“For pathogens that inflict greater morbidity at older ages, interventions that reduce but do not eliminate exposure can paradoxically increase the number of cases of severe disease by shifting the burden of infection toward older individuals” 

15.papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

“Current policy can be misdirected and can therefore have long and even short-term negative effects on human welfare and thus result in not actually minimizing death rates (incorporating externalities), especially in the long run.” 

16.imgcdn.larepublica.co/cms/2020/05/21…

“For example, the data…shows a decrease in infection rates after countries eased…lockdowns with >99% statistical significance. Indeed…infection rates have declined after reopening even after allowing for an appropriate measurement lag. 

This means that the pandemic and COVID-19 likely have its own dynamics unrelated to often inconsistent lockdown measures that were being implemented.” 
17.jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…

“restrictions imposed by the pandemic (eg, stay-at-home orders) could claim lives indirectly through delayed care for acute emergencies, exacerbations of chronic diseases, and psychological distress (eg, drug overdoses).”

“In 14 states, more than 50% 

of excess deaths were attributed to underlying causes other than COVID-19; these included California (55% of excess deaths) and Texas (64% of excess deaths)” 
18.medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

“We found that 180-day of mandatory isolations to healthy <60 (ie schools and workplaces closed) produces more final deaths if the vaccination date is later than (Madrid: Feb 23 2021; Catalonia: Dec 28 2020; Paris: Jan 14 2021; London: Jan 22 2021)” 

19.papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

“Comparing weekly mortality in 24 European countries, the findings in this paper suggest that more severe lockdown policies have not been associated with lower mortality. In other words, the lockdowns have not worked as intended” 

20.nber.org/papers/w27719

“Our findings … further raise doubt about the importance in NPI’s (lockdown policies in particular) in accounting for the evolution of COVID-19 transmission rates over time and across locations” 

21.bmj.com/content/370/bm…

“[the] President…has flatly denied the seriousness of the pandemic, refusing to impose a lockdown, close schools, or cancel mass events…Yet the country’s death rate is among the lowest in Europe-just over 700 in a population of 9.5 million” 

23.pandata.org/wp-content/upl…

“Consistent with observations that .. lockdown has not been observed to effect the rate…of the country reproduction rates significantly, our analysis suggests there is no basis for expecting lockdown stringency to be an explanatory variable” 

25.nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

“recruits were under the constant supervision of Marine Corps instructors. Other settings in which young adults congregate are unlikely to reflect similar adherence to measures intended to reduce transmission.” 

support), and environment (temperature, ultra-violet index). Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate” 
28.upmc-biosecurity.org/website/resour…
“There are no historical observations…that support.. confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods…The negative consequences…are so extreme…this mitigation..should be eliminated from serious consideration” 
29.medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

“we present data demonstrating that mortality due to covid-19… could have been largely predicted even before the pandemic hit Europe, simply by looking at longitudinal variability of all-cause mortality rates in the years preceding the…outbreak”

There are of course anecdotal observations as well–e.g., Florida is doing better than California despite DisneyWorld having been open for months and California having no current plan to ever reopen anything, let alone Disneyland.

I could do a similar thread on the harms of 

lockdowns (and school closures in particular) but that seems unnecessary as such harms have been well documented. If lockdowns were extremely effective, their desirability from a policy perspective would at least be a conversation worth having. However, these papers suggest they 

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