Covid 19 coronavirus: Six arguments against lockdown - and where they fail

You might have seen the arguments. New Zealand over-reacted by locking down. Many of those who'd die from Covid-19 likely would have died shortly anyway. Right now, the economy needs to come first. Science reporter Jamie Morton puts some facts around six of those common points permeating on social media.

Elimination isn't necessary and we can get a good result for New Zealand without it

Most countries have been forced to pick one of two options - mitigation or suppression – that come from the playbook for dealing with an influenza pandemic.

Mitigation is about "flattening the curve" – or allowing the virus to spread, but at a slow enough rate that hospitals can cope.

The United Kingdom initially chose this course with a strategy that would've seen the elderly and vulnerable isolate themselves, as the disease effectively washed through the rest of the population.

That of course changed when the landmark Imperial College London paper predicted that around 250,000 people in the UK would have died under mitigation, even if hospitals were able to withstand the pressure.

Like every other nation in Europe, the UK pivoted to suppression - or "squashing the curve" – and ordered Britons to observe strict social distancing measures.

New Zealand could have also had to pick between these "bad" and "worse" choices, and faced the prospect of losing at least 14,400 if the virus spread out of control.

Hopefully, our country will have acted just in time to stamp out Covid-19 with a third option unavailable to virtually every other developed nation on the planet.

That is elimination, or snuffing out the virus with our radical four-week lockdown, and ideally moving into a phase where authorities can mop up any lingering cases.

This week, a group of academics broke ranks with public health experts by suggesting a lockdown was no longer needed; that many restrictions, such as closing schools, could be eased; and that elimination of Covid-19 was likely unachievable, nor necessary.

This supposed "Plan B" horrified many scientists, among them, leading epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker of Otago University.

"Of the available options, elimination is the least bad – not just because it's proven, but it has an exit strategy."

Baker pointed to China, now in the process of reopening its institutions after pushing the virus to low levels through strict measures.

"Is there a better strategy that these people think we should follow? The only exit strategy for suppression is waiting it out until an effective vaccine or anti-viral comes along."

New Zealand, however, had the opportunity of being able to resume life free of Covid-19.

Lots of people will die because they can't access surgeries

New Zealand's response to the pandemic saw hospitals postponing and cancelling elective surgeries, and freeing up wards for a potential wave of Covid-19 cases.

That's prompted concerns that many people could die because their procedures were put off – or because they've avoided hospitals when they otherwise might have had cancers and diseases detected through pathology testing.

Emergency departments have similarly reported plummeting patient numbers throughout the lockdown.

But Baker makes the point that surgeries would've likely been cancelled regardless.

"It has nothing to do with whether we are pursuing elimination or not; this has been happening around the world as countries have prepared for the pandemic wave arriving."

Baker said elimination didn't just offer the prospect of avoiding hospitals being swamped – as models suggested they would've been under suppression or mitigation – but of returning their operations to normal sooner.

"By not having a pandemic, you can get your health system functioning again normally.

"Otherwise, one of the biggest impacts of a pandemic is clogging up the health system for many months, or maybe even a year or more."

Many elderly who could die from Covid-19 would have died shortly anyway

Baker says it's true many of those people most at risk of dying from Covid-19 have a shorter-than-average lifespan ahead of them.

But that argument failed to reflect two points. One was the fact that this wouldn't merely be a case of a handful of elderly people dying, but a proportion 20 to 30 times higher than in a bad flu season.

Modelling by him and colleagues suggested as much as 89 per cent of 8560 to 14,400 potential deaths would be among the over-60 age group.

"More importantly, though, these are people who are highly valued by their families and in fact would be around for a number of years ahead," Baker said.

"We are talking about a potentially huge loss of elderly New Zealanders – every family in the country would be touched by that."

Professor Christine Stephens, of Massey University's School of Psychology, also warned against such ageist attitudes.

"Grouping all people over 70 is like treating those from ages 10 to 40 as one homogeneous group," Stephens said.

"In addition, people bring their diverse lifelong backgrounds into older age where physiological, social, and health differences actually widen. Although some are vulnerable, many older people are healthy and can survive disease. Using generalisations, which target a very broad group, can be damaging to that group."

In the case of the current pandemic, Stephens said it could be seen how ageism became the basis of "spurious oppositions" that falsely pitted the economy against the lives of older people, or the future of the young versus the health of the old.

"To further counteract the opinions that threaten to reinforce an intergenerational divide we must recognise the contributions that older people make to society."

Baker added that models also indicated many of the potential deaths would be among people under 70, who were otherwise vulnerable or exposed.

"These are people scattered across all age groups, who could've been productive members of society," he said.

"That includes a large number of healthcare workers who are more vulnerable not because of their age or underlying conditions, but because of their high levels of exposure to the virus."

Lots of people will get sick or die because of the impact to the economy and we can ease this by lifting restrictions right now

The economy is indeed taking a hit. This week, the Treasury predicted the jobless rate could reach as high as 13.5 per cent if the lockdown remained at four weeks.

If the lockdown were to be extended, that figure could reach between 17.5 and 26 per cent - Treasury's worst of seven economic scenarios.

The unemployment rate at 10 per cent would imply the number unemployed would be around 275,000 people.

Otago University's Professor Michael Baker. Photo / NZ Herald

Treasury Secretary Caralee McLiesh said annual average GDP growth could fall by as little as 0.5 per cent, or by as much as 23.5 per cent in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021

But she pointed out that the best way to protect the economy was to fight this virus, "which is why we've acted swiftly and decisively to stamp out Covid-19", she said.

"This will give our businesses and the economy the best chance to get going again on the other side."

Baker said: "The intelligent person would anticipate the benefits of acting fast and thoroughly, rather than a prolonged purgatory of rolling lockdowns.

"The other thing, of course, is that many of the hits on the economy are hard-wired in because of global effects like diminished tourism trade, or export prices in other sectors.

"The world is going to have a monumental recession, regardless of what we do.

"So, it's not a simple question of either/or. And if it was, the 'or' – a suppression strategy that could carry for more than a year – looks pretty terrible."

Death rates differ across countries for different reasons, so we shouldn't be using Italy's experience to justify our lockdown.

There has been much confusion about why mortality rates between certain countries differ so wildly.

That's partly down to factors like how deaths are classified – for instance, whether they're deemed "case fatality rates", where doctors are certain the virus caused death, as opposed to the "infection fatality rate" – or testing regimes, demographics, hidden deaths or differences in official statistics.

But Baker and his colleagues say they have a firm idea of what the mortality rate for New Zealand would look like, under different scenarios.

Again, the most plausible scenario of unchecked spread could see around 14,400 deaths here.

That also included as much as 64 per cent of the population becoming sick, up to 32,000 people needing to hospitalised, up to 8000 needing critical care, and up to 4000 requiring ventilators.

On the worst day for the worst scenario, there would be 11,200 people needing to be hospitalised and 2800 needing to be admitted to critical care.

"We are using quite conservative estimates from overseas showing that roughly half a per cent of the population will die if you don't mitigate, but the average is probably more like 1 per cent, when you consider that around 60 per cent of the population will be affected," he says.

"In reality, the suppression model does push down mortality – but then you are back in that state of purgatory."

With just 1400 or so cases, this hasn't been as bad for New Zealand as we were first led to believe.

Throughout the month, the number of new cases of Covid-19 announced each day has regularly been below the 50-mark – arguably a small number when compared with the scale and impact of the lockdown.

But those figures reflect the success of that lockdown – and perhaps distract us from what the numbers might have looked like had New Zealand not gone into lockdown.

Modelling by Te Pūnaha Matatini, New Zealand's Centre of Research Excellence in Complex Systems and Data Analytics, indicated the country could have been seeing 350 new daily cases this week – with numbers rising – without any interventions.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has similarly pointed out that New Zealand was on a similar trajectory to Spain and Italy, and its 205 cases on March 25 could have soared to more than 10,000 now.

Baker said that, while such models were speculative and needed to be treated with caution, the lockdown had certainly spared the country a much worse fate.

"Perhaps if we only get to 1500 cases, a year from now, people might be saying there was nothing to worry about," he said.

"You can apply that to nearly every other preventative measure we've taken in public health. The people who died or never got sick are invisible."

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website

The evidence of how damaging Covid-19 could be, he added, was there on TV news bulletins, with ghastly footage of mass graves being dug in New York City.

"There is a sort of Western arrogance in arguing that the virus in China would have affected us differently. You could even say it's an extension of the idea of complacent exceptionalism."