Oxford Academic (Did lockdowns work?)
“…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.”
”…much has been made of the timing of lockdowns, but the present analysis does not indicate that early lockdowns were more effective. Examples also suggest that lockdown timing may not have been a significant determinant of mortality development: while Belgium and Portugal were among the countries that locked down soon after seeing the first COVID-related death, the former saw an 11% increase in mortality, compared with the preceding three years, while the latter only saw a 2% increase. Among countries that locked down later, the UK experienced an 18% higher mortality than the preceding years, while German mortality in the first half of 2020 was almost exactly average for the time of the year. As such, the data illustrate that strategic examples as are often used in popular media can be highly misleading, which necessitates a more comprehensive evaluation of lockdown efficacy.
The main problem at hand is therefore that the evidence presented here suggests that lockdowns have not significantly affected the development of mortality in Europe. They have nevertheless wreaked economic havoc in most societies and may lead to a substantial number of additional deaths for other reasons. A British government report from April for example assessed that a limited lockdown could cause 185,000 excess deaths over the next years, while UNICEF warns of an increase in child marriages, owing to the economic effects of Western lockdowns in developing countries (DHSC 2020; Philipose and Aika 2021). Evaluated as a whole, at a first glance, the lockdown policies of the Spring of 2020 therefore appear to be substantial long-run government failures.’