Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Jerusalem College of Technology, Jerusalem 9116001, Israel.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Jul 29;19(15):9295. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19159295.
The present coronavirus crisis caused a major worldwide disruption which has not been experienced for decades. The lockdown-based crisis management was implemented by nearly all the countries, and studies confirming lockdown effectiveness can be found alongside the studies questioning it. In this work, we performed a narrative review of the works studying the above effectiveness, as well as the historic experience of previous pandemics and risk-benefit analysis based on the connection of health and wealth. Our aim was to learn lessons and analyze ways to improve the management of similar events in the future. The comparative analysis of different countries showed that the assumption of lockdowns' effectiveness cannot be supported by evidence-neither regarding the present COVID-19 pandemic, nor regarding the 1918-1920 Spanish Flu and other less-severe pandemics in the past. The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save. It is suggested therefore that a thorough cost-benefit analysis should be performed before imposing any lockdown for either COVID-19 or any future pandemic.
当前的冠状病毒危机造成了几十年来全球范围内最严重的破坏。几乎所有国家都采取了基于封锁的危机管理措施，既有证实封锁有效性的研究，也有质疑封锁有效性的研究。在这项工作中，我们对研究上述有效性的文献以及基于健康与财富联系的先前大流行的历史经验和风险效益分析进行了叙述性综述。我们的目的是吸取教训，并分析未来如何改进类似事件的管理。对不同国家的比较分析表明，封锁有效性的假设不能得到证据的支持——无论是针对当前的 COVID-19 大流行，还是针对 1918-1920 年西班牙流感和过去其他严重程度较低的大流行。封锁对公共卫生的代价是高昂的：通过利用健康与财富之间已知的联系，我们估计封锁可能会导致 20 倍以上的生命年损失，而不是挽救生命。因此，建议在对 COVID-19 或未来任何大流行实施任何封锁之前，应进行彻底的成本效益分析。
