Comparing weekly mortality in 24 European countries, the findings in this paper suggest
that more severe lockdown policies have not been associated with lower mortality. In other
words, the lockdowns have not worked as intended. Further tests also show that early
interventions offered no additional benefits or effectiveness and even indicate that the
lockdowns of the spring of 2020 were associated with significantly more deaths in the
particular age group between 60 and 79 years.
The main problem at hand is therefore that the evidence presented here
suggests that lockdowns have not significantly affected the development of
mortality in Europe. They have nevertheless wreaked economic havoc in
most societies and may lead to a substantial number of additional deaths for
other reasons. A British government report from April for example assessed
that a limited lockdown could cause 185,000 excess deaths over the next
years, while UNICEF warns of an increase in child marriages, owing to the
economic effects of Western lockdowns in developing countries (DHSC 2020;
Philipose and Aika 2021). Evaluated as a whole, at a first glance,
the
lockdown policies of the Spring of 2020 therefore appear to be substantial
long-run government failures.
https://academic.oup.com/cesifo/adva...fab003/6199605