The lockdown is expensive and might well not work. Here’s why we should try it anyway. Robert Wiblin Follow Mar 24 · 3 min read

Image from Life on Lockdown in China in The New Yorker

There are many reasons not to try a suppression approach to COVID-19 that involves enforced lockdowns and more. It may be too costly, both economically and psychologically, and it may well not work.

But my perception is that many experts in the area, perhaps most, seem to want us to follow that approach for now. Here are the arguments I’ve thought up in favour of trying it first, which I think could be informing their views:

Global deaths in a true ‘do nothing’ scenario could be 50 million+ (e.g. 5 billion infected, 1% infection fatality rate, or something along those lines).

In a ‘do nothing’ scenario COVID-19 would likely still cause a serious recession via people’s fear of going out, when they see carnage in flooded hospital emergency rooms. But by then it will be too late to do anything much to lower the number of fatalities.

We might be able to suppress the disease for a long time by going hard on containment for a short while, then maintaining a pleasant-enough equilibrium like in South Korea/Singapore, with better hygiene standards, much more widespread testing, and so on.

Countries that allow themselves to be overrun by COVID-19 will negatively affect other countries by constantly reinfecting them.

If we find the costs are exceeding the benefits we can always change course later (e.g. if we find the IFR is lower than we thought, or the economic impacts turn out to be greater). But if we don’t start on suppression now, that boat will simply have sailed. Maintaining the option to go either way in future is very valuable.

We don’t yet know if COVID-19 has long-term health effects on a non-trivial fraction of survivors, like inducing chronic fatigue syndrome or causing lung damage, which could have huge economic and quality of life impacts for decades to come. We want to keep suppression as a live policy option until we settle that question.

Even if today’s suppression efforts don’t stop a huge number from ultimately being infected, they can merge into and contribute to the ‘Flatten the Curve’ approach, in which we aim to avoid too many people ever being infected at once.

These delays also buy us time to get more ventilators, train people to use them, and so on.

We might find a treatment option that cuts infection fatality rates in as little as a few months’ time (though it will of course take longer to scale up delivery), so even if we end up switching to a delay strategy, that alone might save many lives.

We’re seeing dramatic economic responses on the part of governments, which may limit the financial damage of a temporary lockdown.

Suppression gives us a slightly higher chance of largely eliminating SARS-CoV-2 with a vaccine at some future time (admittedly a slim chance).

Maybe like me some epidemiologists just kind of enjoy working from home.

There are probably also some other reasons I haven’t thought of here.

In a few weeks I may decide that suppression and the lockdown are doing more harm than good. But for now, I’m happy to see the world giving them a proper go.

What are the best arguments against this?

The people who I’ve found to be most against adopting a suppression strategy typically think epidemiological models suggest it won’t actually stop the virus from spreading very much — or that it will bounce back as soon as we relax the lockdown. I disagree because it appears China is already having a great deal of success.

More plausibly, some commentators think that suppression is possible, but that countries like the US lack the state capacity to pull it off. That remains to be seen, and in my view is worth testing before we throw in the towel.

Thirdly, some think a lockdown will cause a financial crisis that will cripple the economy for many years, causing great hardship as well as ill-health. I am hopeful that lending from central banks as well as common-sense on the part of employers and lenders, will prevent that from happening. But the extent of the economic damage we’re suffering is something we need to carefully monitor as we go forward.

Learn more

Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance by Tomas Pueyo (March 19)