Before the next lockdown, let us reflect on the costs and benefits

Thank goodness the COVID lockdowns are over. Now we can get back to normal life which, unfortunately, increasingly means ending one lockdown and launching another. Enthusiasm is already building among the usual suspects. So to prevent mass death and promote human flourishing, can we take this moment of relative calm to outline a systematic approach?

To recap briefly, my position for longer than I care to recall has been that when this dang thing first appeared, a drastic response was called for. We didn't know how contagious or virulent it was (h/t Matt Ridley for reminding us that virulent means “harmful”), and if it spread like a cold and killed like Ebola there was no time to lose. But it doesn't.

We did lose time. But our initial combination of panic with lethargy is spilled milk. Unlike the fact that we still don't know how contagious it is because we still have no idea how many people have caught it and were asymptomatic. Seriously. But we do have some idea to whom it is dangerous and it's not Jane Q. Public. So let's start our systematic approach there.

Before launching another lockdown because of a rise in the variants, or because ending any lockdown seems invariably to produce a surge, can we please get a clear statement from the experts who say about who's statistically at risk from a severe case? And then, and I want to make this point absolutely clear, an explanation of how any new lockdown measures aim to prioritize protecting them.

By now we must have sufficient data for polite coherence to replace yelling about getting with whatever the

program is today. As on another point on which I have hammered until my arm hurts and your ears too: a clear statement of the expected costs of the lockdown.

I'm no fan of econometrics. But before anyone says some dumb thing about valuing people over money, of course we must allocate scarce resources among competing ends in health care as elsewhere using some benchmark. In this case the QALY (to quote Wikipedia, “The quality-adjusted life year … a generic measure of disease burden … is used in economic evaluation to assess the value of medical interventions. One QALY equates to one year in perfect health.”) Moreover, we have extensive preCOVID studies of the health

costs of poverty, isolation, depression etc.

Dismissive remarks about patio dining overlook that people's lives matter. Not just their existence. What they do while existing. Even ones you don't know or think much of. A massive disruption in family gatherings, religious attendance, education, exercise, social activities, or earning a living, isn't a joke. It burns QALYs as if they were trash.

Here I'm indebted to True North for a Statistics Canada report “Provisional death counts and excess mortality” that says some 5,535 Canadians under 65 died that would not have if there were no pandemic. COVID deaths for this group were 1,380, meaning “indirect consequences” of

the pandemic were deadlier than the virus. The report warns, “the pandemic could also have indirect consequences leading to an increase or decrease in the number of deaths due to various factors, including delayed medical procedures, increased substance use, or a decline in deaths attributable to other causes, such as influenza.”

These things are not easy to count. But they do count, and someone should try, especially given our faith in computer models with hockey-stick case curves that fail laughably in practice. If you can count how many Canadians will die of COVID in three months if we wander about irresponsibly without T-shirts over our faces, you can count how many died

unexpectedly during the lockdowns.

Speaking of T-shirts, here's another thing that needs proper airing. Since spring 2020 we've been told nothing works but masks and vaccines. Now that we're getting serious vaccination rates we're being told vaccines don't work either (e.g., NBC's July 19 “All children should wear masks in school this fall, even if vaccinated, according to pediatrics group”), a strange role reversal that does raise suspicions about enthusiasm for a docile, properly managed populace in some quarters. So let's get serious about the real health risks in a population with vaccination-driven (or natural) “herd immunity.” And can we finally talk about other remedies?

Yes, I too sighed when the zinc-plus-vitamin-C zealots piped up. But there's enough evidence that acute cases correlate with vitamin D deficiency to merit further investigation and polite discussion. And on other topics including, finally, whether non-medical masks are anything but jujus.

I never liked the lockdowns and fear their return. But I'm willing to be persuaded, if you've got good manners and sensible arguments about who's vulnerable and how best to protect them, the efficacy of various remedies and prophylaxes, and benefits and costs generally.

What better time than now for calm, open debate?

PETER J THOMPSON / NATIONAL POST FILES A couple enjoy dessert at a patio in downtown Oakville earlier this month. Now that the COVID-19 pandemic appears to be easing, it is time to have a polite discussion about which restrictions were necessary and which ones weren't, based on the best science available to us.