"Abstract: 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...
4. Discussion ...
The extreme measures that deprived billions of their basic human rights followed (without any reasonable discussion) the abandonment of well-prepared crisis management plans. The extent of human life lost due to lockdowns themselves has never been quantitatively reported and therefore never been taken into consideration in the decision-making process. Moreover, governments continuously stuck to these measures despite the absence of proof that such measures were effective in controlling the pandemic...
We should stress here that the burden of proof is with the lockdown proponents. Lockdown opponents do not have to prove that lockdowns cause damage, the proponents must prove that lockdowns are beneficial. The latter statement follows from the two basic principles, which are outlined below.
The first is the classical medical principle ‘primum non nocere’—first, do not harm...
The second foundation is the classical juridical principle ‘semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit’—in any dispute, the burden of proof lies with those who lay charges...
The questions of to what extent, why, and how the dissenting (disapproved by healthcare officials) scientific opinions were suppressed during COVID-19 deserve a special and urgent analysis. Suppression of 'misleading' opinions causes not only grave consequences for scientists’ moral compass; it prevents the scientific community from correcting mistakes and jeopardizes (with a good reason) public trust in science. At least, publicly funded research should be scrutinized for conflict of interest to avoid artificial scientific consensus."
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).