Did COVID-19 lockdowns result in significant saving of lives?

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There is a debate in the media whether COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in significant saving of lives. Did they? By "lockdown", we mean a hard state-enforced lockdown that includes mandatory limitation of movement of people rather than voluntary social distancing. Thus, the alternative to lockdown against which the performance is evaluated is not people and businesses doing nothing but rather doing things largely voluntarily without state coercion.

Items and predicates: infections (cases), deaths, COVID-19-caused deaths, delayed treatment caused deaths, COVID confirmed deaths, excess deaths from all-cause deaths, epidemiologists, economists, journalists, columnists

Search terms:

• did lockdowns save lives
• did lockdowns significantly reduce mortality
• were covid lockdowns good
• were covid lockdowns effective

Disclaimer: This debate was constructed with the help of general web searches. One would probably find other kind of material with a proper search strategy in Google Scholar. One should take what follows with great caution, as a first impression.

COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in significant saving of lives

Pro

• Argument for Lockdowns worked per Furlong 2023.
  • Objection The article states that "Speedy implementation of a combination of measures such as face masks, lockdowns and international border controls, “unequivocally” reduced COVID-19 infections, a major review has shown." But the question is not about whether lockdowns reduced infections before they were lifted as unsustainable long-term--they probably did reduce infections--but rather whether they reduced mortality in the relevant year range, 2020-2023, as compared to voluntary measures. The article text contains neither the word "death" nor "mortality"
• Argument for Lockdowns worked per Murdoch and Caulfield 2023.
  • Objection The article does not seem to make any statement that lockdowns reduce mortality; rather, it lambasts those who question that idea. Verification strategy: reading the article, augmented with search for "death" and "mortality".
  • Objection The article's labeling the opposition as "lockdown revisionism", a pejorative label that on its own has no force of argument, is suspect.
• Argument for Lockdowns saved lives per Adam 2020.
  • Objection An article from Jul 2020 could not have shown that lockdowns saved lives rather than delaying the deaths by a year or two.
• Argument for "COVID lockdowns saved millions of lives" per Hiltzik 2023.
  • Objection To support his key thesis, Hiltzik quotes a study stating that lockdowns "can provide powerful, effective and prolonged reductions in viral transmission". But reduced transmission is no guarantee that lockdowns save lives rather than delaying death by a year or two.
    • Objection On the other hand, he points out that "Florida’s COVID death rate of 411 per 100,000 population was 10th worst in the nation."
      • Objection COVID deaths are an unreliable indicator; one should look at excess deaths based on all-cause deaths.
      • Objection Hiltzik mentions possible different age structures in the U.S. states and then dismisses the problem by pointing to a single other state as a point of comparison. That is not a way to do a serious statistical analysis. Surely if there is a statistical correlation between severity of lockdown in the U.S. states and reduced excess death rate, one should be able to properly show it.

Con

• Argument against A meta-analysis Herby et al. 2023 suggests otherwise.
  • Objection Herby et al. 2023 is published by Institute of Economic Affairs, a free market think tank. That increases the risk of bias toward less severe COVID-19 interventions.
  • Objection The authors Herby, Jonung and Hanke published a different study before, which was criticized by Sample and Geddes 2023 in Guardian.
    •  Comment The authors showed the ability to learn from criticism by publishing an updated version. (This does not conclusively show their ability and qualification, though.)
  • Objection The three authors are not epidemiologists or health policy or medical researchers, which increases the likelihood that they have not mastered all the intricacies of performing a meta-analysis.
• Argument against Yanovskiy and Socol 2022 suggest otherwise.
• Argument against If lockdowns worked in significantly reducing death, it should be possible to create a study that shows a statistical correlation between lockdown severity indicator (0-1 or 1 to 10) and excess mortality or other relevant indicator. But such study seems hard to find online.
  • Objection Given the meta-analysis above was able to find some studies to work with, one probably only needs to know where and how to look.
• Argument against Tierney 2021 suggests otherwise.
  • Objection Manhattan Institute is a conservative think tank, and New York Post is a conservative newspaper. Therefore, there is an increased risk of bias toward less severe interventions.

See also

• Did Swedish COVID-19 policy perform well?

Further reading

• Did Lockdowns Work? by Jonas Herby, Lars Jonung and Steve H. Hanke, Jun 2023, iea.org.uk -- a pdf "book"
• A Bibliography on the Economic, Social, and Political Costs of Lockdowns, sites.krieger.jhu.edu
• Lockdown: A Final Assessment by Douglas Allen, Jan 2023, fraserinstitute.org