EDITORIAL: We need a cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns
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You’ve all heard the line before: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
That may be what’s happening with Canada’s COVID-19 response. The more that daily cases are reported and the higher the hospitalizations numbers run, the more aggressive come the calls for locking down the people of Canada.
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Are these efforts actually working though? The numbers suggest they’re not.
We support enhanced hygiene, social distancing and indoor mask-wearing. These are relatively minor inconveniences that cause minimal chaos to society.
However, the widespread shutdown of stores, schools, gyms and much more creates great carnage. There is the raw economic cost, but there’s also the psychological harm that’s being inflicted on many people.
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Are these broader restrictions actually doing anything? That’s a good question. We don’t know.
There are jurisdictions that implement restrictions only to see things get worse a couple of weeks later. Then there are other jurisdictions that don’t implement more restrictions and they stay the same or become no worse than the place that didn’t tighten their lockdowns.
We also need to ask if the benefits outweigh the harms.
Dr. Ari Joffe, a pediatric infectious diseases physician and university professor based out of Edmonton, authored a research paper that concluded the costs of lockdowns are “at least” 10 times higher than the benefits.
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This is clearly something governments need to look into and immediately devise their own cost-benefit analyses. They can no longer recklessly continue down the path of locking down society without having run the math.
More experts and politicians are waking up to these realities.
“We simply cannot stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass,” Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday via social media. “The cost is too high. We will have nothing left to open. We must reopen the economy, but we must do it smartly and safely.”
Our leaders need to focus on solutions-based actions that deal with hospital capacity and long-term care facilities. This is what we need our best and brightest focused on.
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