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Conversely, places with few COVID-19 restrictions such as Brazil, Sweden, Russia or at times certain parts of the USA have had large numbers of excess deaths throughout the pandemic. Indeed, there are no locations in the dataset that experienced both excess mortality and lockdowns concurrently with low numbers of COVID-19 cases, which is what we would expect if lockdowns were independently causing large numbers of short-term deaths. Similarly, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand had either no excess mortality or only very modest increases in mortality during lockdown periods when there were few or no COVID-19 cases. Using these data, we can see that New Zealand and Australia, two countries that imposed several lockdowns and heavy restrictions, experienced no excess mortality during 2020. Using this dataset, we can examine a range of locations that both have and have not imposed lockdowns in terms of their potential damage to population health. The project defines excess mortality as mortality greater than the anticipated modelled number of deaths given existing trends. This project has accumulated excess mortality data on 94 nations from the onset of the pandemic, with the most recent data being reported up until mid-2021. The World Mortality Dataset 5 is the largest international dataset of all-cause mortality, including many countries that have imposed and not imposed restrictive measures against COVID-19.
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1 2 The tagline for this claim is that “the cure is worse than the disease”. A much stronger claim that has still persistently appeared in the media as well as peer-reviewed research concerns only health effects: that there has been a large toll of death and disease attributable directly to government action against COVID-19, a toll larger than that of COVID-19 itself. The claims often include the idea that the benefits of lockdowns on infection control may be outweighed by the negative impacts on the economy, social structure, education and mental health. While necessarily broad, this definition encompasses the strict interventions embraced by many nations during the pandemic, particularly those that have prevented individuals from venturing outside of their homes for most reasons. We define a ‘lockdown’ as a highly restrictive set of non-pharmaceutical interventions against COVID-19, including either stay-at-home orders or interventions with an equivalent effect on movement in the population through restriction of movement.
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3 Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Kobenhavn, Denmark.2 School of Health and Society, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia.1 Western Sydney Diabetes, Western Sydney Local Health District, Blacktown, New South Wales, Australia.