If you impose limits on someone in the name of public health, you -that is, the state-have an obligation to compensate them in some way to guarantee that they have access to food, that they don’t get evicted because they can’t pay their rent.” “Many people suffered financially because of it, and in the world of public health ethics, there is a language that talks about reciprocity. “It was inconvenient for many, many people,” Bayer said. Some of the economic impact was partly mitigated by efforts like stimulus checks, unemployment insurance relief, eviction moratoriums, and student loan forbearance, which Bayer deemed as necessary. There were economic effects, particularly on GDP and unemployment.

Neither of these claims is without merit: Certain health conditions, particularly mental problems, were exacerbated as people were isolated from friends, family, and communities. Economic concerns have focused primarily on the U.S.’s gross domestic product (GDP), but also the overall economic impact on non-essential businesses that were forced to close. In terms of health, the claim is that lockdowns only worsened existing health conditions because people were isolated and had reduced access to medical care. In addition to claims that lockdowns were ineffective, additional critiques come in two main forms: health-based and economics-based. Some countries avoided lockdowns in favor of early and robust mitigation efforts, but the lack of a unified public response in the U.S. Even so, the country faced higher mortality rates than neighboring Norway, which had instituted a lockdown. However, Sweden did implement similar measures and, as a whole, people were willing to voluntarily stay at home without government orders.

Sweden, a country that did not institute lockdowns in the same way as other countries, is often used to illustrate this perspective. Some critics of lockdown measures claim that they did not work to reduce the spread or flatten the curve. It did probably help stop disease, but the burden of that kind of social stigma of having to be protected from the very people you depended upon was manifest in the ways we organized our services…We called them essential workers and yet there was a certain level of distrust in depending upon them.” David Rosner, also at Columbia, agreed that there was a reason for these orders, but highlighted the disparities lockdowns produced: “There was obviously a rationale for it. Ronald Bayer, a public health ethics expert at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health (full disclosure, Bayer is a former professor of this reporter), told the AmNews in an interview, “As far as the lockdowns are concerned I think they were done…when that seemed, given the evidence available, the most reasonable thing to do.” Were lockdowns the right choice to reduce that number? Dr. Lockdowns were intended to decrease the contact rate by reducing the number of people with whom a potentially infected person came in contact. If R0 is less than 1, each infection causes less than one new infection, meaning that the spread of disease is slowed and, eventually, stops. R0 is a mathematical measure of a disease’s contagiousness, calculated by multiplying the probability of transmission per contact, the number of people in contact with an infected person, and how long a person stays infectious. However, these measures were not met without controversy and many have questioned their effectiveness.įrom an epidemiological perspective, lockdowns aim to reduce the basic reproductive number R0. These lockdowns were promoted as both a way to “stop (or slow) the spread” of infection within the community and “ flatten the curve” by reducing and delaying the number of new cases to ease the burden faced by hospitals and medical professionals. In New York, as well as many other states, lockdowns mainly sought to keep people at home by closing schools and “non-essential” businesses such as restaurants, bars, and clubs to the public.

and the world, from general suggestions to avoid crowded public places to mandates that fined individuals for being out of their homes without a valid reason. These orders differed in severity across the U.S.

and countries across the world began issuing some form of lockdown or stay-at-home orders. On March 15, 2020, days after the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), states across the U.S.

Nyc lockdown measures