“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” – Albert Einstein

A Realistic Look at the Lockdown 

If you get your news from the NYT or CNN, you probably believe that the US has the worst record among all advanced countries in dealing with the Corona Crisis. We have the most diagnosed cases and our official death toll is more than 190,000.

Both of these data are, of course, meaningless.

If the objective is to analyze performance in preventing death (and what other criterion would one use to impose an economic lockdown and create a worldwide recession?), you have to compare COVID-19-related deaths to the size of the population. (Actually, you’d need to compare COVID-19-caused deaths, but thanks to the CDC, we don’t know those numbers.)

So now that the pandemic is more than 8 months old, how does the US compare?

As of September 14, the US per-population death rate from COVID-19 stood at 59.5 per 100,000 people.

Here are the numbers for some other countries:

* Spain: 63.8

* UK: 70.4

* Belgium: 87.4

* Netherlands: 71.4

* Brazil: 62.8

* Mexico: 56.1

* Italy: 59.0

And the death rate in Sweden, which was vilified by the NYT and CNN for taking a much less stringent approach and letting its economy go on more or less as normal, is now at 57.5.

“Hold on!” I hear my friends saying. “What about Norway, Denmark, and Finland? They had strict shelter-in-place mandates and their per-population death rate is less than 10.0! Surely that says something!”

Yes, those Nordic countries that imposed strict lockdowns have very impressive population-based numbers compared to Sweden.  (And the US and all the other advanced economies mentioned above.)

France, Germany, and Canada have much better numbers, too. Have they done something differently than Italy, the UK, and Spain? The answer is no. Italy, for one, implemented the strictest shutdown rules in all of Europe.

And how do we explain the great numbers from countries like Thailand, Bangladesh, Niger, Papua New Guinea, Mongolia, and Haiti? They have numbers that are 5 times better than Norway and Denmark. Are we to believe they have done a better job at wearing masks, washing hands, and social distancing than Canada, Germany, and France?

(I’m not going to talk about China, which, if you believe their numbers, have a mortality-per-population rate of 0.34!?)

The point is: It’s impossible to say right now – based on the available data – whether the lockdowns have worked, or will work, at reducing the eventual death toll.

Social distancing definitely slows the spread of the virus. (That has been clear since the beginning. None of the reputable epidemiologists ever said anything but that.)

But slowing the virus is useful only to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed (which never happened) and to allow for an adequate production of ventilators (which health practitioners now acknowledge can be problematic for COVID-19).

What we can say with certainty is that the lockdowns resulted in a worldwide economic collapse that will be with us for years to come.

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