Maybe we shouldn’t have had lockdowns at all?

I have great respect for the Wall Street Journal’s news operations, but just about zero respect for their editorial page. I used to think that even the editorials were at least well-reasoned, even if their reasoning was wrong. But since maybe a couple months after the pandemic began in the US, the editorials essentially abandoned any real effort to reason in their editorials, so that they now seem to be driven solely by ideological calculations.

So it was with today’s op-ed titled “Covid Lockdowns were a Chinese Import”. It makes the argument – which they’ve made a number of times previously – that the US never needed lockdowns in March and April 2020. They blame them on a Democratic inclination to do whatever the Chinese do. The Chinese locked down Wuhan, so Gavin Newsom locked down California in March 2020 – and other states (especially blue ones) followed his lead in April (I don’t recall the WSJ objecting to the lockdowns until May, though).

Of course, they don’t allow that maybe, just maybe, there was real danger that something bad might have happened if the blue-state governors hadn’t locked down – or at least that no governor in their right mind would have wanted to gamble that they weren’t needed, and not locked down. But I have to admit that I agree with them that the lockdowns weren’t necessary, except for one little fact (which I’ve mentioned before): On March 28, 2020, there had been 533 Covid deaths so far in the US, but they were growing at the rate of 640% per week (i.e. deaths were almost doubling every day). Moreover, 40% (close to one in two) of people who caught Covid died of the disease.[i] Not great odds, no?

If Covid deaths had continued to grow at that rate, the entire US population would have been dead by my birthday, May 10, 2020. Sure, the decision might have been wrong. But the lockdown was what saved Wuhan. Would any responsible person have foregone use of this tool when there were literally no other tools to fight the pandemic (of course, no vaccines and no therapeutics)? Just because there was a chance that the lockdown wasn’t needed, and people could have kept working anyway? Give me a break…

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, March 20.

Month	Deaths reported during month/year	Avg. deaths per day during month/year	Deaths as percentage of previous month/year
Month of March 2020	4,058	131
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
Month of July	26,649	860	111%
Month of August	30,970	999	116%
Month of Sept.	22,809	760	75%
Month of Oct.	24,332	785	107%
Month of Nov.	38,293	1,276	157%
Month of Dec.	79,850	2,576	209%
Total 2020	354,215	1,154
Month of Jan. 2021	98,604	3,181	119%
Month of Feb.	68,918	2,461	70%
Month of March	37,945	1,224	55%
Month of April	24,323	811	64%
Month of May	19,843	661	82%
Month of June	10,544	351	53%
Month of July	8,833	287	84%
Month of August	31,160	1,005	351%
Month of Sept.	56,687	1,890	182%
Month of Oct.	49,992	1,613	88%
Month of Nov.	38,364	1,279	77%
Month of Dec.	41,452	1,337	108%
Total 2021	492,756	1,350	158%
Month of Jan. 2022	65,855	2,124	159%
Month of Feb. 2022	63,451	2,266	96%
Total Pandemic so far	997,933	1,356

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 997,933

Average daily deaths last seven days: 589

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 1,040

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.4%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 81,410,101

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 235,424 (33,632/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 209,611 (29,944/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.3% (0.3% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

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[i] I’ll admit that this percentage is biased upward by the fact that tests were in very short supply, so a lot of people who were sick were never tested. On the other hand, the overcrowding of hospitals in New York and New Jersey meant that some people died of Covid without ever being admitted or tested.