It was easier for people to lockdown when it was sunny and people could help by drinking beer in a national park. Now people just have to stay inside alone, the impact on standard of living is much lower.
If the average person has had a life quality reduction of 1/3 during the pandemic, that's equal to 23m quality-adjusted life years (QALY), or 287,500 lifetimes. Even with way more conservative estimates, death has been massively outweighed by other areas of impact of the pandemic.
I speak to more people now who say "I can't just stay inside for the rest of my life", particularly younger people where the social/life impact of lockdown is higher. It's different being a 22 year old guy locked down on their own in a flat and being asked to see nobody, compared to being a 48 year old guy locked down with their wife and family in a cottage.
Of course, I'm coming at it from a perspective where I don't think the potential deaths from the pandemic are obviously outweighed by other things that have happened since it started.
Much of the economic impact would have come regardless of government actions, and there would likely have been much more death if the spring pauses had not happened (there's been much time for people to make less costly adjustments, treatments have improved, etc.).
I didn't speak concretely, and it is reasonable if you clearly list your assumptions! But the broader point is that if we were looking at QALY as a measure that's very different to deaths.
> there would likely have been much more death
There might have been more death, but it's also worth considering what this is in terms of net-QALY as the average age of death is >80. If we lock down 30 people for a year to add 3 years of life to someone, is that a good trade?
And now you are being absurd, jumping from 1/3 quality of life reduction as an estimate to locking people down for a year. I'm in the US, where the harshest restriction has been on businesses, people have never been locked in their homes. We've had shelter in place orders and similar, but the enforcement of those amounts to "please".
Yeah, I stand by that as a rough estimate.
From my experience a lot of people are ignoring it. I've been to-the-letter in terms of compliance. Nearly everyone I know hasn't been - they often say "well, yeah, but I know I haven't got it so it's OK", or similar. Some are just flat out deniers. It's not everyone - obviously my experience is only anecdotal - but I think that would explain a lot of it, plus it not really being a lockdown in the true sense.