For context, in Ireland we are about to come out of a six week lockdown, and reported cases have dropped by about4-4.5x.
Not sure what the hell happened to make the English lockdown so ineffective (and to be fair, it's not like the lockdown is actually ending, it's just becoming more regionalised).
The word "lockdown" is being used for everything from "welding anyone with a fever into their apartment" to "a mild suggestion that people work from home if practical." Any reasonably restrictive lockdown which minimizes time spent outside one's own home and limits travel between regions is, if enforced, going to rapidly reduce R-values, and shortly thereafter, active cases.
Unfortunately, many jurisdictions aren't willing to accept the financial losses from such a lockdown, and so institute something between a token effort and a sham, invariably following it some weeks later with a declaration that "lockdowns don't work."
From my experience a lot of people are ignoring it. I've been to-the-letter in terms of compliance. Nearly everyone I know hasn't been - they often say "well, yeah, but I know I haven't got it so it's OK", or similar. Some are just flat out deniers. It's not everyone - obviously my experience is only anecdotal - but I think that would explain a lot of it, plus it not really being a lockdown in the true sense.
It was easier for people to lockdown when it was sunny and people could help by drinking beer in a national park. Now people just have to stay inside alone, the impact on standard of living is much lower.
If the average person has had a life quality reduction of 1/3 during the pandemic, that's equal to 23m quality-adjusted life years (QALY), or 287,500 lifetimes. Even with way more conservative estimates, death has been massively outweighed by other areas of impact of the pandemic.
I speak to more people now who say "I can't just stay inside for the rest of my life", particularly younger people where the social/life impact of lockdown is higher. It's different being a 22 year old guy locked down on their own in a flat and being asked to see nobody, compared to being a 48 year old guy locked down with their wife and family in a cottage.
Of course, I'm coming at it from a perspective where I don't think the potential deaths from the pandemic are obviously outweighed by other things that have happened since it started.
Much of the economic impact would have come regardless of government actions, and there would likely have been much more death if the spring pauses had not happened (there's been much time for people to make less costly adjustments, treatments have improved, etc.).
I didn't speak concretely, and it is reasonable if you clearly list your assumptions! But the broader point is that if we were looking at QALY as a measure that's very different to deaths.
> there would likely have been much more death
There might have been more death, but it's also worth considering what this is in terms of net-QALY as the average age of death is >80. If we lock down 30 people for a year to add 3 years of life to someone, is that a good trade?
And now you are being absurd, jumping from 1/3 quality of life reduction as an estimate to locking people down for a year. I'm in the US, where the harshest restriction has been on businesses, people have never been locked in their homes. We've had shelter in place orders and similar, but the enforcement of those amounts to "please".
Yeah, I stand by that as a rough estimate.
In this "lockdown," schools remained open, and people were encouraged to go to work if they can't work from home. Restaurants and pubs were closed for dine in service, but they are allowed to do takeaway. "Non-essential" shops were closed, but anecdotally, lot's of non-essential shopping continued at places like supermarkets and hardware stores. Prior to the lockdown, there were already tiered regional restrictions in place, so rather than going from wide open to locked down like in March, we went from somewhat restricted to somewhat more restricted and now we are going back to somewhat restricted.
edit: added C
The UK is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, 14th according wiki.
Ireland is one of the least densely populated countries in the world 112th.
I see these intercountry comparisions all the time and it makes no sense, every situation is vastly different. I'm in Australia, and know I have it good, but Australia had all the factors going for it, it's easily isolated from inter country travel and it has very sparsely populated cities. It's economy is also propped up with an abundance of natural resources unlike services based economies like the UK.
I commute to the CBD every day and it's nowhere near like it was, I can get a seat on the train, even with distancing. I couldn't even get a seat during rush hour before covid.
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/land-cover-atlas-uk-1.74...
So it's not people per area. Perhaps a better measure is "mean distance" between people? That means Australia is pretty dense because most people live in dense areas. Urbanization is obviously a much better metric than raw density.
But this also misses another important factor: Australi, and Sweden (which are sparse but urbanized so low pop/sq.qm but low mean distance), unlike the UK is pretty "disconnected". There are clusters with high density, but they are separated by areas of low density.
It's likely better in an epidemic to have 3 cities with 1 million separated from each other, than 30 cities with 100k people each, where people in each cities visit/commute to the next 5 cities. That's what some places like UK/Netherlands/Belgium have. They are extremely dense in the sense that it's always close to the next population center. There are no natural borders or empty spaces. People from city A work in town B, and some fraction of people in town B work in city C and so on. Towns A and Z are connected by just a few days worth of normal commute for thousands of people.
So in some sense, we actually have an appropriate control for your assertion that its down to population density.
In general, the data does not support your assertion around population density, as the Republic of Ireland has (post lockdown) a rate of 88.5 per 100k, whereas Northern Ireland has a rate of 2788 per 100k.
Source 1: https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/cases-2019-ncov-eueea Northern ireland: https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/covid-19-statistics
So, in this particular case, it seems unlikely that population density is driving the differences.
I do agree that raw country comparisons can often mislead, but i stand by my original points.
Northern Ireland also has loads of inter UK travel every day, I know people who were at some points commuting from London to N.Ireland.
I didn't want to get into a whole explanation for someone, just to make a point about density not being the primary driver in this case (although it definitely has an impact).
The figure you've quoted is close to the total for all of Northern Ireland (2,505) for the last 7 days.
I think the general point is still valid though, as there's a substantial difference between the two regions.
Our first lockdown was a real lockdown where the streets were a ghost town. Right now you wouldn't even know it was a lockdown, you'd think it was just mild precautions.
This lockdown wasn't particularly severe, in terms of rules and enforcement, and anecdotally people haven't been taking it as seriously as the first one.
For example, back in the April lockdown, central London was virtually deserted. Almost all businesses completely closed, and famously crowded locations like Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square were almost completely devoid of people. A very eerie and strange sight!
But this time, the streets have remained pretty busy. Many businesses and offices are open and in the evenings there's a relaxed, festive atmosphere on the streets. Although pubs are restaurants are "closed" inside, they are allowed to sell takeaway food and alcohol. So there are many pubs open in Soho (for example) selling takeaway drinks and people are hanging around outside drinking and eating and having a great time. Street party!
Socially, there also seems to be less fear of the virus than there used to be. During the first lockdown, a lot of people were quite fearful of going out. Now, not so much.
Lots of people, festive atmosphere, most shops appeared to be open, coffee shops were open, cafes were open.
The difference was coffee shops and cafes were only doing takeaways and outdoor service. But it's hard to see that from a distance, especially the ones lit and processing orders at the usual counters inside. As a result, people were eating and drinking outside, and it made the seated areas on the streets seem busier than normal.
The pubs were closed, that was the most noticeable thing.
Clothes shops were closed, except M&S which is 80% clothes was open, presumably on the excuse that at the back they sell food. I noticed quite a few other large shops open that seemed "non-essential" to me, but who am I to judge what's essential.
My landlord's property agent was open, which surprised me when they asked me to take a letter there. I asked about that, and they said they are alternating who is in the office each day so there's only half the staff. I'm not convinced they are essential, especially when they seemed to be able to work from home just fine earlier in the year, but it's up to them.
Walking down the street while keeping 2m from other people was difficult even on pedestrianised streets (no vehicles) because of so many people. I didn't see much mask wearing outside - less than in the summer.
It made me quite uncomfortable to be honest; I haven't been out since.
I know that it's more severe in other regions of the UK. But where I live, Oxford, it seemed quite lax. Our case rate here is below average for the country despite a very large number of students.
They must be doing something right, as the figures have started dropping clearly on the charts over the last week. I hope it's because they're being smarter about what to restrict now. Maybe they're actually getting better at this.
This lockdown was business as usual, with social distancing. The only real limits are how many people can meet up.
It's a farce of a lockdown, so it's only been partially effective.
Edit: Actually, yeah I see your point. To some extent yes, as I'm using the confirmed cases number for Ireland. But when I eyeball the google confirmed cases graph it looks like there's been a 50% reduction in confirmed cases, so my major point still holds.
I guess in the case of Portugal family reunions against the government's advice could be a factor. It seems hard to get the relevant data, though.
Why are you mixing units? If infections are down 4X so 100 -> 25 (-75%), why not just quote in per cent terms as the headline is?