This would apply to America too. The author relies on US data as well as Canada data to conclude the costs of lockdowns outweigh the benefits of lockdowns.
Economist: Lockdowns ‘Greatest Peacetime Policy Failure’ in Canada’s History
Read the rest of the article at the link.Earlier this month, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease official in the United States, struggled to explain why COVID cases and deaths in Texas were continuing to fall even though the Lone Star State had lifted the last of its restrictions against Fauci’s advice a month earlier.
"It can be confusing,” Fauci began. “Ofen you have to wait a few weeks before you see the effect ... I’m not really quite sure. It could be they’re doing things outdoors."
Weeks later, COVID-19 cases and related deaths continue to fall in Texas and other states that lifted restrictions, including Mississippi and Oklahoma. Meanwhile, many states with restrictions have seen a resurgence of the virus, including Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.
Costs and Benefits of Lockdowns
Why states without restrictions are currently faring better than states with restrictions is unclear. But a recently published economic study may offer a clue.
Canadian economist Douglas Ward Allen, the Burnaby Mountain Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University, suggests the ineffectiveness of lockdowns may stem primarily from voluntary changes in behavior.
“Lockdown jurisdictions were not able to prevent noncompliance, and non-lockdown jurisdictions benefited from voluntary changes in behavior that mimicked lockdowns,” writes Allen. “The limited effectiveness of lockdowns explains why, after one year, the unconditional cumulative deaths per million, and the pattern of daily deaths per million, is not negatively correlated with the stringency of lockdown across countries.”
Allen’s thesis would help explain the abundance of data that show lockdowns and other restrictions have been, at best, largely ineffective at reducing the spread of COVID-19.
His study does not stop there, however.