I’m willing to admit I supported lockdowns in the beginning because they seemed to be good in theory. Sacrifice some freedom now to preserve long-term aggregate freedom and prosperity. Eventually, every intellectually honest and reasonable person needs to ask, where’s the real evidence? After two weeks to flatten the curve turned into 10 months and counting with a world undone, people are understandably skeptical of whether harsh lockdowns had any benefit. Some studies such as one published in Nature by a large team of epidemiologists, state that lockdowns have drastically reduced the potential damage of COVID-19. However, such studies are unreliable as they rely on assumptions about what they think could have happened. They take the cases and deaths today and then make up a potential outcome for what would have happened without lockdowns, then claim that lockdowns worked.
Others simply point to the success of countries like New Zealand, which implemented harsh lockdowns. Of course, New Zealand has had its issues with recurring lockdowns, but with only 25 COVID deaths at the time of this writing, it is still a strong performance so let’s call it a success for the purpose of this argument. The problem is that to justify a policy like lockdown, you need to prove that it works consistently everywhere. This doesn’t just apply to lockdowns; it applies to everything in life. Imagine if someone wanted you to buy a fat burning pill that worked on exactly one person out of a sample size of hundreds and that one person was a professional athlete (New Zealand is a small island that reacted very quickly). On top of that, most of the people who took the pill either stayed the same or got fatter. Just like how many of the countries with the strictest lockdowns ended up with the most deaths per capita alongside massive economic and social damage. You should be very skeptical about taking that pill.
