BIG NEWS New paper out in BMJ Global Health with a brilliant team of researchers on the health impacts of lockdowns Long story short - lockdowns aren't ideal, but COVID-19 outbreaks are probably much worse 1/nhttps://gh.bmj.com/content/6/8/e006653 …
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4/n Firstly - lockdowns cannot possibly cause massive increases to short-term deaths. We used the World Mortality Dataset to look at this, thanks again
@ArielKarlinsky and@hippopedoidShow this thread -
5/n Places WITH lockdowns but WITHOUT COVID-19 epidemics did not see excess deaths. There are numerous examples of this, and it largely invalidates the idea that lockdowns in and of themselves cause fatalitiespic.twitter.com/sW7kB6jA2v
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6/n Importantly, this DOES NOT MEAN that lockdowns necessarily prevented deaths, as comparisons such as the UK vs Sweden show, but that it is not consistent with the evidence to claim that lockdowns have large impacts on short-term mortalitypic.twitter.com/UBfKZsvaCv
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7/n After that, we get into the REALLY complex stuff. We looked at: 1. Disruptions to health services 2. Mental health/suicide 3. Global health programmes
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8/n To cut a long story short, the evidence for all of these is mixed. There's some data showing impact of government interventions. There's also data showing that large numbers of COVID-19 cases are bad as well
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9/n Mental health in particular is a tricky subject. Lockdowns certainly have not been associated with increases in suicide, but there have been consistent worries about mental health
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10/n That being said, there's also evidence that people dying from COVID-19 in large numbers is not, uh, ideal for mental health, and disentangling those two impacts is extraordinarily hardpic.twitter.com/9JRg7HQt8y
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11/n What does this all mean? Well, it takes us back to the start of the thread Lockdowns = bad COVID-19 = probably worse
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12/n If government interventions against COVID-19 work, then it's likely that they are beneficial on the whole. There may be lockdowns that have been both good and bad, and it will take us a long time to solve that riddle
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13/n The bottom line is pretty simple really - all of this is far more complex than a simple yes/no. Rather than the tedious rhetoric of "lockdowns bad", we should be asking WHICH lockdowns were good/bad, and WHY
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14/n All that being said, based on current best evidence we do not think it is possible to say definitively what harms lockdowns do have to health, but we can say that it is likely that these harms are not worse than the disease itself
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15/n Thanks to the amazing team who've worked on this
@DrSamirBhatt@LeaMerone@GYamey@flaxter and all the rest of the authors!Show this thread
End of conversation
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