A peer reviewed study, which was conducted by a group of Stanford researchers and published in the Wiley Online Library, has found mandatory lockdown orders did not provide significantly more benefits to slowing the spread of Covid-19 than other voluntary measures.
According to Newsweek the study compared cases in England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the U.S, countries that implemented mandatory lockdowns and business closures, to South Korea and Sweden, which implemented less severe, voluntary responses.
The Stanford researched utilised a mathematical model that subtracted “the sum of non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) effects and epidemic dynamics in countries that did not enact more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions (mrNPIs) from the sum of NPI effects and epidemic dynamics in countries that did.”
It was mathematically determined and confirmed that there is “no clear, significant beneficial effect of [more restrictive measures] on case growth in any country.”
The study goes on to state:
“Implementing any NPIs was associated with significant reductions in case growth in 9 out of 10 study countries, including South Korea and Sweden that implemented only lrNPIs [less restrictive NPIs] (Spain had a non‐significant effect). After subtracting the epidemic and lrNPI effects, we find no clear, significant beneficial effect of mrNPIs on case growth in any country,” the study said.
“We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures,” the research added.
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