Covid and the lockdown effect: a look at the evidence
What forces Covid into reverse? To many, the obvious answer is lockdown. Cases were surging right up until the start of the three lockdowns, we’re told. It’s often said that all else failed. The Prime Minister said on Tuesday that lockdown, far more than vaccines, explains the fall in hospitalisations, deaths and infections. But how sure are we that only lockdown caused these falls — in the first, second and third wave? Or were other interventions, plus people’s spontaneous reactions to rising cases, enough to get R below one? In a peer-reviewed paper now published in Biometrics, I find that, in all three cases, Covid-19 levels were probably falling before
