Lockdowns

2.1.1.  What are lockdowns?  Lockdowns are measures taken by a government, usually with questionable legality, to restrict activities and movement by the public, such as school closures and travel restrictions.

2.1.2.  What lockdowns have occurred in response to COVID-19?  Governments throughout the world have made various attempts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 via lockdowns.  The University of Oxford has developed a COVID-19 government response tracker to track and compare these government responses.  For a graphical depiction of these lockdowns over time, click here.

2.1.3.  Are lockdowns legal?  There is much debate about the legality of government-directed lockdowns.  In the United States, since the Constitution does not specifically grant the federal government the power to restrict the movement and activities of its citizens, that power (if it even exists), is “reserved to the states respectively, or to the people” according to the Tenth Amendment.  States have taken different approaches, as the laws of each state regarding this topic are different.

2.1.4.  Are lockdowns effective?  There is much debate about the effectiveness of lockdowns.  What started out as “two weeks to flatten the curve” turned into “lockdown until vaccine” which turned into vaccine mandates and COVID passports.  Sweden took a different, trust-the-population approach that made many “experts” angry.  But Sweden ended up with a lower COVID-19 mortality rate than most of Europe.  Futhermore, there are many second and third order effects of lockdowns, such as mental health, suicides, and drug overdoses.  Few in the government or news media even notice these effects, much less factor them into decison-making.