Covid lockdown response by state and country… mortality appears unaffected

The coronavirus pandemic has been in play for over a year with over 500,000 deaths in the US being attributed to the virus, or associated with a positive test. (see worldometers.info data, and a number of other sites). Details of cases, deaths, lockdowns, vaccines, economic costs, social fallout, etc. will be teased out for years. Given the level of politicization and bias witnessed in official responses, data and debate, gaining a clear insight into reality will be difficult. “Following the Science” can apparently mean all kinds of contradictory claims these days. What should be one of the most objective fields of study, Medicine, has been politicized and emotionalized to the point of annoyance and abuse.

I have written several blogs along the timeline of this experience, here, here and here in an attempt to understand and document. My impression from the beginning has been that the lockdowns have been excessive and will have significant monetary and non-monetary costs to persons and society (unemployment, personal and national debt – into the many trillions of dollars, unsought or unavailable medical care, depression, social isolation) that could exceed the death toll from the virus. Again, this will be an ongoing debate for a long time to come.

Interestingly, I personally tested positive with COVID in early January 2021 via a PCR nasal swab. My symptoms were primarily mild headache, intermittent chills, low grade fever (less than 100.5 F), and muscle aches that lasted a week or so. I had about a week of greatly reduced taste and smell, which resolved completely. For a respiratory virus, oddly, I never had any significant respiratory symptoms: no shortness of breath, cough or runny nose. Anecdotally, I would classify my experience as a mild to moderate viral syndrome. I’ve certainly had much, much worse. I was able to walk the dogs every day (in the woods, away from people… so don’t have a conniption).

Viral case numbers and deaths looked to have peaked on/around January 8, 2021. Of note, at that point, roughly 6.7 million doses of vaccines had been administered. So, it looks like whatever impact the vaccines will have, the trend had peaked before a significant portion of the 330M American population received a dose,… or the two doses, which have been required to be considered immunized. (6.7M/330M = 2.03% of the population, if each single dose represented an immunized individual, although it may represent half that number of persons, receiving two doses, or 1% of the population.)

Of particular interest to me, now that there is more data, is to tease out what differences (or lack thereof) could be attributed to harsh lockdowns: forced business closures, closed schools, and social distancing mandates. Clearly, some US states took very different approaches. Georgia, for example, was ridiculed and shamed in The Atlantic back in April 2020, for not locking down… “An Experiment in Human Sacrifice.” Jeffrey Tucker wrote an insightful article in December 2020, at the American Institute for Economic Research which discusses how all of the horrible death and destruction did NOT happen in Georgia to the extent that it did in some locked down states. Potentially, as a direct result, that state’s economy is doing very well in comparison to its locked down counterparts.

DataUSA offers an interactive graphing tool to compare states’ data. I wanted to see how low to no lockdown states (e.g. FL, GA, TX) have done in comparison with strict lockdown states (e.g. CA, NY, MI, PA) with regard to deaths per 100,000 population. FL 147, GA 164, TX 149 – compared to CA 131, MI 165, PA 187, NY 196. For mortality, California did the best and New York did the worst. Following the graphs and numbers, I would have to outright reject anyone’s argument that locked down states showed any significant improvement in mortality over those that did not lock down. How much was (mis)spent financially, socially, politically in the endeavor?

Internationally, I’ve been interested in Sweden. Along the path, Sweden has been both a beacon and a pariah, depending on the time frame and the reporting outlet. At the year mark, however, Sweden appears to have done well in comparison to strict lockdown counterparts, like the UK, although Sweden’s neighbors did even better, with a mix of government interventions. From worldometers.info, Sweden’s deaths per 100K have been 123, and the UK 180 to date, following similar graphing trends.

• 

• 

There is much more to analyze. There will be ongoing debate about herd immunity, vaccine efficacies, immunity passports, masking, and on and on. From what I am seeing with the data here regarding lockdown severity vs mortality, my personal opinion is that I would prefer to be in a non-lockdown state in the future, where civil liberties and economic opportunities will not be trampled by state/government actors via destructive, emotional, politicized, and poorly-evidenced interventions.