Professor Michael Levitt has labelled COVID-19 lockdowns a “huge mistake”. Levitt, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2013, contends that the economic and social damage of the lockdowns will greatly exceed the number of lives that may be saved.
Levitt contends that Sweden and Germany have responded best to COVID-19, while he has labelled Australia, Austria and Israel as the “standout losers”.
He contends that their lockdowns have caused great economic and social damage and hurt the education of their children, while they have not managed to create “herd immunity”.
I was interviewed by the Daily Mail where I responded in kind to Professor Levitt’s claim that Australia’s lockdown has been a failure:
Economist Leith van Onselen, who worked for Treasury, Goldman Sachs and now writes for website Macrobusiness, said it was true that lockdowns had been painful for the economy but if Australia had not taken such extreme measures, the long-term economic damage would have been far worse.
‘Because we managed to get a grip on the situation so early, the Australian economy will recover much faster than if we had let the virus rip,’ he told Daily Mail Australia on Sunday.
‘Indeed, recent MIT research showed that jurisdictions that undertook harsher lockdowns during the Spanish flu of 1918/19 experienced much stronger economic recoveries post virus.
‘The government must ensure that it eases lockdowns in a controlled manner. If they trigger another breakout of the virus it could necessitate another, even more severe, lockdown. Much like what has happened in Singapore,’ he warned.
‘That outcome would result in the total collapse of faith in authorities to manage the crisis, delivering a much deeper structural blow to confidence across the economy, for a much longer period.’
Other’s agreed:
Medical teacher Dr John Campbell, who combats coronavirus myths in daily evidence-based YouTube updates, said this thinking was ‘really dangerous stuff’.
‘Australia is not a loser as if they hadn’t locked down now it would have spread,’ he told Daily Mail Australia on Sunday.
‘If you followed this guy’s advice, in one month’s time the disease would have been absolutely all over Australia.
‘So the fact that Australia locked down early has actually saved Australia from economic ruin.’
Dr Campbell said without early lockdowns, Australia would soon have had up to 10 million cases.
This would have developed some herd immunity but would have overwhelmed the health system up to nine times over and raised the case fatality rate, he said.
In any event, it is hard for Professor Levitt to claim that Australia’s COVID-19 lockdown has failed when it has experienced only a tiny fraction of the cases and deaths experienced in Germany and Sweden:
The numbers don’t lie.
