Thread: An interdasting study on the cost/benefits of lockdowns in Canada

http://www.sfu.ca/~allen/LockdownReport.pdf

I think it is a fairly well down study for what it was trying to measure. The tone of it seems narrative-driven though I don't necessarily really disagree with the content and what was being said. Though a long read I think it's worth reading it and considering all the good points made here.

Basically it attempted to measure the years of life lost in the Canadian population (2 months per person) versus the the years of lost life prevented due to the lockdowns (average age of death from covid is 80 years old and the average 80 years old has 10 years to live). It basically found that even under the most optimistic circumstances, the costs are 3x the benefits upwards to 286x.

I think this does have a lot of limitations but still worth noting. And I think the costs could possibly be even worse than what this study is noting:

- the study is comparing actual lives that are lost to people who are still living, but have had their lives impacted, study does acknowledge this though and the problem with assigning values to a particular life. Clearly somebody dying which could have been prevented is more "valuable".

- study does not account for lives lost as a result of the lockdown (i.e: suicides, overdoses, etc)

- doesn't account for other utilty (i.e: domestic violence, reduced quality of life, poverty, child development/learning, mental health, physical health, fear, human rights etc), on the flip side for covid the utility could be things like permanent damage, reduced quality of life due to having covid, hospital care/resources, etc

- many of the costs of lockdowns won't be able to be realized or quantified until say a decade down the road

- doesn't account for the variability of lockdowns across Canada, i.e: Toronto has had some of the most stringent lockdowns in North America where say Halifax not so much, but these would be aggregated

- Many of these 80 year olds have comorbidities, so it may not even be a reasonable assumption that they had 10 more years to live. I suppose you can say most 80 year olds do, but we know that even among 80+ year olds, it was generally those who were the least healthy that were dying, IMO they probably wouldn't have lived past a few years at the very most so the number of years of life saved due to lockdowns may be overstated

several studies are confirming what a number of people (including me) were suspicious of all along - that lockdowns were nothing more than an experiment to measure obedience and compliance while also eliminating small business in the hopes of enhanced government dependency and societal and social destabilization

Originally Posted by friesbruh

several studies are confirming what a number of people (including me) were suspicious of all along - that lockdowns were nothing more than an experiment to measure obedience and compliance while also eliminating small business in the hopes of enhanced government dependency and societal and social destabilization

This. This is where the conspiracy theories started and they have a point worth addressing.

Governments passed mandates without even evaluating the cost to society and individuals because their agenda was, in their opinion, more important regardless of the cost. It comes at no cost to them.