This is a submarine post? Bollocks. Hell, the domain of the link is clearly a law firm's news page, with links directly back to the law firm itself (Rose Law Group).

Nothing obfuscated about this, thus failing the submarine criteria. Just plain ole brand-building blog post stuff, standard "insightful" but-also-clickbate stuff we see all the time on HN.

Who is they?

What do you mean by submarine in this context?

It's a reference to PG's old essay about PR pieces placed as media stories.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932a1.htm Between this, ruined economy, and people dying due to lack of access to "elective" (but not really) medical care, it'll be pretty clear that "lockdowns" are not free of cost. Sweden looks smarter with every passing day.

Sweden's handling of the pandemic has been a catastrophe, causing the death of thousands of people.

If you look at the numbers of countries that had a decent pandemic response with lockdowns... like Vietnam, Croatia, New Zealand. These 3 countries account for 242 deaths.

Sweden alone accounts for 5800, almost 25 times as much as those 3 countries combined!

Sweden looks good only in comparison of other countries that locked down only after it was too late (e.g. UK, it was several weeks ahead of the curve, and it totally squandered that advantage). There's something to be said for Sweden's population managing to socially distance a bit without being compelled by law enforcement. But that doesn't help the economy anyhow, since they also got a 8% drop in their GDP.

Also, those three countries have combined population of 105+ million. Sweden has 10.3 million. Quick napkin calculation suggests a 244-fold death rate per capita.

How can you reasonably compare an isolated island country like New Zealand with anyone else?

Croatia is not an island, Vietnam is not an island.

I included multiple countries exactly to pre-empt straw man objections like those.

Who was saying "lockdowns" are free of cost? Was that ever seriously argued?

> Who was saying "lockdowns" are free of cost? Was that ever seriously argued?

I've seen a lot of people argue that the economic damage would have been the same whether we locked down or not, which is effectively the same argument.

Sweden: 8% GDP drop

countries that locked down early:

China: 3% GDP increase

Vietnam: 2% GDP increase

New Zealand: 2% GDP drop

Croatia: 15% GDP drop

Denmark: 7% GDP drop

Norway: 6% GDP drop

(obviously, the numbers cannot be easily compared since they might refer to slightly different periods, but all of these include Q2 2020)

From these numbers, it's not obvious at all that not locking down would actually be beneficial for the economy. In fact, except for a few outliers like Croatia (disproportionately impacted by the drop in tourism revenue, I presume) it seems that locking down prevented even steeper losses.

These numbers need to be compared to the numbers in the same country for the previous year. For example, in China a 3% increase is actually a regression, because they did 6% in 2019.

Even that isn't enough, because we don't have the numbers for each country if it didn't lock down. It's all hypothetical. What would Norway's GDP growth rate have been without a lockdown, for example? The answer is a number. It's unknowable. People claiming that things would have been as bad, or worse, have zero evidence to back them up. People like me who say it would not have been as bad have evidence based on observed consumer behavior which was clearly curtailed during the lockdown and improved after.

I hate break it to people, but C19 is not going anywhere and this is not over yet, especially in countries/locales where there were very few infections. Meanwhile, Sweden had no new cases yesterday.

There are definitely people who think both of those things are true, but you could also argue that the economic damage would have been the same and also that there would have been other costs (e.g. losses to individual autonomy, lost social connections / harms to community, resulting stress and trauma, etc. etc. )

> but you could also argue that the economic damage would have been the same

I really doubt that. Look at how people were behaving until the day the lockdowns began. Look at how people are behaving now. They aren't afraid of going to bars and restaurants and shops. There is no good reason to believe that they wouldn't have behaved the same way the entire time, if the lockdowns had not intervened.

It's obviously true that the economy would have been damaged with or without the lockdowns. It's entirely different to claim that the damage without lockdowns would have been as bad as the damage with lockdowns.

Restaurants are waaay emptier then they used to be. What are you talking abou?

They aren't entirely empty though, are they? Yet during the lockdowns it was illegal to go to restaurants. Some customers are better than no customers. Ask any restaurant owner if they would prefer lockdowns to the current state of affairs.

Again, it's not like the economy would not have been damaged either way, but it's obvious that the lockdowns made the economic damage worse.

OTOH we're ordering in like never before

@twblalock - can't reply to your reply so replying here instead.

I also doubt it and wouldn't argue it myself, I was just pointing out that making that argument need not imply that you think there are no other costs, i.e. those arguments are not equivalent.