Do lockdowns have positive effects against the pandemic? Stanford Report
What emerges from a Stanford University research on the impact of the lockdown in the spread of Covid-19. Here are the conclusions published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation .
The lockdown, the forced closure of almost all activities and the quarantine of the population, do not stop the contagion of Covid-19. Or at least, not as much as they hope and should.
This was revealed by a study from Stanford University, conducted by Eran Bendavid , Christopher Oh , Jay Bhattacharya and John PA Ioannidis , published in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation .
All the details.
I STUDY
Scientists compared the growth trend of Covid infections, between March and April 2020, in 10 countries around the world, England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden and the United States. , analyzing how much more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have affected the control of the spread of Covid-19.
The study, the scientists write, aimed to assess "the growth effects of the most restrictive NPI (mrNPI) epidemics, above and beyond those of the least restrictive NPI (lrNPI)."
NO SIGNIFICANT BENEFITS AGAINST COVID WITH LOCKDOWN
While most of the countries analyzed have imposed lockdowns and quarantines, Sweden and South Korea have not. And the comparison between the growth trend of infections of these two countries with the other 8 shows that more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions have not brought significant benefits to justify the sacrifices of the population, experts say.
If the implementation of the NPI has led to significant reductions in the growth of cases in 9 out of 10 countries studied, so it was not for the more restrictive non-pharmaceutical measures: "After subtracting the epidemic effects and the NPI (less restrictive NPI, ed. ), we do not find any clear and significant beneficial effect of mrNPI (most restrictive NPI, ed) on the growth of cases in any country ".
LOCKDOWN AND COVID: THE CASE OF FRANCE
"In France – the experts explain – the effect of NPIs was + 7% (95% CI: −5% -19%) compared to Sweden and + 13% (−12% -38%) compared to Korea of the South (positive average values per contagion) ".
SIMILAR BENEFITS ON CONTAGION CONTROL EVEN WITH LESS RESTRICTIVE MEASURES
It is precisely these numbers that lead experts to argue that if it is true that “small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on the growth of more restrictive NPI cases. Similar reductions in case growth can be achieved with less restrictive interventions. "
IMPORTANT CONSEQUENCES ON THE POPULATION
But the question goes far beyond the small benefits. The lockdown, with the forced closure of activities, La Verità writes today, citing the study, has also had significant consequences on the population. Among these "the collapse of the treatment of other diseases because the attention has been focused on Covid, and therefore the increase of some diseases, the spread of forms of mental distress due to lack of sociality, depression, up to the increase in domestic violence ".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/i-lockdown-hanno-effetti-positivi-contro-la-pandemia-report-stanford/ on Fri, 12 Mar 2021 13:17:50 +0000.