 |
| Dad and daughter at Tamar Park, near Wanchai |
In the South China Morning Post print version the headline is “Paying a price for lockdowns”.
I don’t often agree with Philip Bowring, (who I know from my government days in Hong Kong). But I most certainly do agree with him in today’s piece, linked above. Indeed it’s more like Bowring agrees with me given he takes points straight out of my Letters and blog posts. Eg, the death rate from pneumonia vs from Covid (pneumonia 90 times higher). And… governments put a price on life all the time (rebuttal of the absurd notion, widely bruited, that “one death is too many”).
My comment at the site: we need additions to the government Dashboard. Now they only have daily cases and deaths from Covid. We need other measures such as excess deaths, Covid and non-Covid. Excess bankruptcies, suicides, depressions, debt, etc… “Excess” being variation from projections for normal times. This would help give some perspective
The point being that lockdowns have costs and they’ve been largely ignored. Lockdowns probably don’t work anyway, other than push down deaths temporarily. After lifting restrictions, they spike up again. Sweden has avoided this by not strictly locking down. The higher deaths per million in Italy, Britain, France, Spain, than in Sweden is evidence. Here is Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden’s Covid response.
ADDED: Philip points out country differences in Asia. Bangladesh with no lockdown has half the deaths per capita of India’s which has severe lockdown. Philippines has severe lockdown but high Covid death rate. I could add Peru and Argentina, both strict and long-term lockdown countries which still have high Covid death rates compared with Latin America averages.
The evidence is: lockdowns don’t work, except to ravage economies and societies.
