https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...ource=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-onward-journey
I think that Dr Raghib Ali is absolutely spot on with this; it isn't right to use simplistic and/or flawed models for this analysis and I commend him for taking into account all the factors that we now know about.Delaying the first lockdown may have inadvertently saved more lives than it cost, according to a new analysis.
A number of scientists and opposition politicians have claimed that delaying the decision caused tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.
However, a University of Cambridge expert now argues that countries who locked down early effectively delayed part of their first wave to the winter, resulting in higher overall mortality.
Dr Raghib Ali, a senior clinical research associate at the university’s MRC Epidemiology Unit, said Britain’s relatively late lockdown meant more people were infected in the spring, when underlying pressure on the NHS was relatively light, meaning they were protected by antibodies come winter, when the service traditionally struggles to cope.
Writing for The Telegraph</a>, he said in the absence of a vaccine, lockdowns postpone infections, rather than prevent them, and suggests that March and April was a better period in which to catch the virus.
Many of the claims that Britain’s late lockdown exacerbated the death toll have been made using the statistical models that urged the measure in the first place.
By contrast, Dr Ali compared the UK to European countries with similar populations, age structures, seasons and healthcare systems.
While Norway and Finland, which locked down a week before the UK have both had small first and second wave death tolls, these are exceptions, according to Dr Ali, also a professor public health at New York University.
“What happened in many other countries in Europe who also locked down (and closed their borders) at the same time is that they did have very small first waves in spring 2020 but this was followed by much larger second waves in autumn/winter 2021 (and now into spring 2021, too)”, he writes.
“And this has happened despite second and third lockdowns in many of these countries as people understandably struggled to maintain compliance with restrictions for months on end.”
He adds: “But based on current trends it seems likely that many of these countries that we thought were doing well due to their early lockdowns and small first waves will end up having higher excess mortality than the UK, including Czechia, Poland, Portugal, and many others....
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