Forget the Cheese of Zero COVID. Escape the Mousetrap of Lockdowns

Ramesh Thakur

Ramesh Thakur is the Director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, and Professor of International Relations at the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, Australian National University. read more

David Redman

David Redman is a retired Canadian Army Lieutenant Colonel and a former head of Emergency Management Alberta. read more

On February 18, SKY News UK trumpeted that ‘Lockdown is working! COVID-19 infection rate plummets in England’. Yet, as Figure 1 shows, Sweden with voluntary social distancing guidelines experienced an earlier and faster decline of COVID deaths per capita. The other interesting feature about the figure is how the mortality curves are policy-invariant, mimicking one another regardless of policy interventions between Sweden, the UK and the EU countries. The virus infection, hospitalization and mortality curves seem to rise and fall by seasons, independent of lockdowns.