My comments:
1. The countries in the "elimination" category are: Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, South Korea, Japan. Note:
a. They are all islands. Well, ok, Korea isn't quite an island, but its only land border has been closed since 1950 so it's effectively an island. Islands are obviously far easier to shut off from the rest of the world, as all these "eliminationists" did.
b. They are relatively remote, especially the first three. Iceland? New Zealand? Seriously? And also tiny populations: NZ and Iceland together fewer people than in our Kowloon here in Hong Kong.
Taking these countries as exemplars is like giving a step ladder to a basketball player and then marvelling at how well he dunks the ball.
2. By contrast, the "mitigation" category countries all have land borders and much higher population densities than the "elimination" countries. Their GNP's also dwarf those of the "elimination" category (85:15). So any comparative measures of how their economies have performed (chart below) are rather dubious. Your classic apples and oranges.
3. At the time all this was kicking off -- in Feb/March 2020 -- the talk was all of "flattening the curve" labelled here as "mitigation". I remember! That was believed to be the best strategy. The only strategy as I recall, the only one, "based on the science"!
4. I've said various times: there's many a PhD to be earned by analysing the connections between various levels of lockdown and the outcomes for this pandemic. This Lancet study is surely a contribution, but just that: a contribution. I don't buy its conclusion. Not quite yet, anyway.
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| From the Lancet article |
A better study would be the 50 states of the United States. They all handled the pandemic differently, depending on the Governor. Have a look at the difference between how each handled it and the outcome. That would be a more interesting study than the comparison of apples and oranges in the Lancet article. (Spoiler alert: Republican-run states did better than Dem-run ones).
