Thread by @MarkChangizi, Lockdowns were NOT common sense measures. They were hysterical reactions out of [...]

Lockdowns were NOT common sense measures. They were hysterical reactions out of fear.

Here are 15 of just some of the reasons why it was not common sense.

(I’m not including all the reasons we have NOW to see they were a bad idea.)

1. Evidence was poor that COVID19 was doomsday in the first place.
~ Low IFR https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/
~ R0 around 2.3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32097725
~ Age distribution similar to flu https://twitter.com/JamesTodaroMD/status/1254475378795651072?s=20
~ Hits those with significant morbidities.
~ Safer for the young than flu.

2. Literature review prior to COVID19 had little good to say about shutdowns

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf

3. Almost no awareness of the impact on civil rights, as if emergency declaration suspension of rights, house arrest, mass unemployment and business shutdowns is just something democratic governments sometimes do.

4. There was no historical precedent for putting the entire healthy population in "quarantine".

Never. Before.

Yet this was common sense.

5. There are broad classes of physical distancing & other measures that can slow down infection spread, including organic responses from governmental urgings, shopping times for those with comorbidities, greater cleaning, etc.

And nothing is obvious about which one works best.

6. Even if lockdowns in principle work, do real humans follow them sufficiently well that it remains better than other measures? Not. Obvious.

7. Was the infection even discovered early enough that lockdowns would make much of a difference?

8. Might lockdowns handicap society on reaching herd immunity? Is this good, or bad?

9. Nor is it common sense that lockdowns, even if they handled the infection risks better than other measures, are best when the economic consequences are included. The economic consequences are not common sense. They are devastating, including health and quality of life.

10. Lockdowns can lead to people not seeking medical attention, raising mortality in other areas of medicine.

11. Lockdowns and the resultant economic downturn and loneliness can lead to depression, greater domestic abuse, alcoholism. Is it common sense that these are worth it? Nothing obvious about it.

12. Lockdowns lower everyone’s immune system. Does this make everyone more prone to ANY infection once they come out?

13. Lockdowns confine people together, and nearly all infections happen in such situations, not from grocery stores, restaurants, parks, etc. The mean reproduction number in such situations can be much higher.

14. Members of extended families tend to interact even during lockdowns. But because extended families overlap other extended families in a network, infection continues to spread. This could mean lockdowns worsened things. Common sense doesn’t tell us whether it’s faster or not.

15. The greatest low-risk black swan dangers for humans are the stuff other humans do. Riots, revolutions, wars, human-induced famine, and so on. Playing with civil rights en masse while devastating the economy -- what could go wrong?

"The moral of coronavirus19 will be that social contagion via social networks is more dangerous than biological contagion." https://twitter.com/MarkChangizi/status/1239995212572876802?s=20