The world's toughest lockdown has resulted in the world's highest COVID-19 death toll

Once hailed as a COVID-19 “success story,” Peru is now the COVID-19 case study that lockdown advocates no longer want to discuss. Lima is on pace to surpass Belgium (another strict lockdown country) sometime next week as having the world’s highest COVID-19 deaths per million. So why is no one talking about it?

Pandemic panic promoters have been quick to criticize neighboring Brazil for its leadership’s more relaxed policies towards the virus, but they’ve been noticeably absent in discussing Peru. That’s because Peru implemented arguably the earliest (for their region) and strictest lockdowns in the entire world, along with several attempted suppression measures with the hopes to contain the virus, and none of it worked.

For months on end, Peruvians were largely forbidden from leaving their homes. The country began its lockdown like many others, by cutting itself off from the rest of the world, closing its borders to outsiders, and shutting down the nation’s economy and society. Similar to policies seen in U.S. lockdown states and Europe, only “essential” businesses were allowed to be open. Peru then took the shutdown a step further. The military has enforced a nationwide mandatory 10pm-4am curfew (some cities have lengthened the curfew to 8pm-5am), most “essential” stores are only open for a handful of hours a day (most grocery stores close at 3pm), and citizens face extreme penalties and legal consequences for failing to abide by the rigid restrictions.

The world's toughest lockdown has resulted in the world's highest COVID-19 death toll

There is more evidence that HCQ can treat the virus than there is that lock downs help save lives from the virus.

In fact, as time progresses it is becoming clear to me that lock downs cause more deaths from the virus. Not to mention all the other bad effects that lock downs have on us.

Never Again!

Your general inference about the ineffectiveness of extreme lockdown shown by Peru in reducing the Covid-19 mortality is illogical. It ignores vital factors prevalent in Peru such as poor diet, poverty/unemployment, large families, 3rd world health system, etc. Lockdown does not guarantee low infection rates and/or mortality. It just minimises it against a backdrop of social factors that work in the opposite direction. In the case of Peru, these factors have combined effectively to weaken the effectiveness of lockdown - more so than for many other countries. It certainly does not demonstrate that extreme lockdown does not work. No one ever claimed that that was all that was needed to eliminate the virus. One cannot generalise from a 3rd-world country to what works (or does not work) for 1st-world countries. All one can say is that extreme lockdown did not work for Peru. The reasons for this have to do with Peru, not with the measures themselves.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

I'm in one of the strictest lockdown countries since March, with slight easing of it the past couple of weeks, we still have most measures in place.

Curfew 8-5am
Total Alcohol Ban (only recently lifted, but you can only buy it from 1-5pm)
Masks AND face shields while grocery shopping / commuting
Checkpoints between certain areas

As a healthy not-at-risk person it truly sucks, no doubt about it, but globally nothing is going back to any kind of "normal" for quite a while yet.

IMHO, Restricting movement of those at-risk is what should have been enforced rather than complete lockdowns.

But unfortunately that does not take into consideration at-risk persons living alone, OR the living conditions and culture of many countries round the world where there are 3 or 4 generations living in the same cramped accommodation together in close proximity - even if the younger ones do the shopping, they would spread it to those who are at-risk.

Going by the Peruvian curve, they have kept deaths at almost a constant trickle since they introduced the lockdown measures and death rates have not gotten severely out of hand despite their medical system having extremely limited resources to begin with.

Taking all that into consideration. Sure - they have almost double the death rate of the US currently, and that's with a budget per person of around 1/12th the US (not taking the massive inequality spending into consideration) and a far less sophisticated medical system. I'd say they've done OK, considering.

While I don't believe that the lockdowns will necessarily prevent what we will see as actual Covid deaths significantly in the long term. I do believe that they may help stop other preventable deaths, especially in countries where healthcare is/was already strained.

Run of the mill heart attack - there are still ambulances.
Hit on the head by a falling hammer - you can still get an MRI's.
Peanut Allergy - There are still paramedics.

Swedens curve is, IMHO the most interesting non-lockdown countries figures. One that simply screams Pull off the bandaid already. BUT in contrast to many other nations, they had a stellar healthcare system in place to begin with and again, there was not multiple generations of folk living together as there is in many developing countries.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

I wonder why anyone ever thought reducing business hours and forcing people to all try and pack in shopping in the same narrow window as everyone else was a good way to stop the spread of disease. You end up in a situation where you're stuck in line surrounded by people for far longer than you would be otherwise. There's less time to clean anything between customers and generally does the opposite of what you should be doing to stop disease spread.

Likewise funnelling people through single entrances, cutting back transit and ferry services all force people into situations where they're spending more time around more people than they would otherwise.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

Peru indeed is an interesting case.

There was a sharp increase in ICU cases of COVID-19 in mid to late April. It was probably at this point that their medical facilities were overrun and hence the death rate climbed, despite the growth in new infections remaining slightly more linear. They did reign it in slightly after a month, which probably indicates an improvement in efficiency in dealing with COVID-19 medically.

Peru overall also has a low population density. It would be expected that transmission of a virus would be higher in more crowded locations but none of Peru's cities are in the top 60 for population density. So that clearly isn't a factor.

Looking at Peru's statistics, there are some rather anomalously brief, but high peaks in daily deaths and daily cases which makes me wonder if the reported data is accurate? No other country with a similar numbers of cases is showing anything like these spikes (countries with very few cases can easily show large spikes but as case numbers increase, fluctuations 'smooth out').

For example, on 14 August, 4,143 deaths from COVID-19 were recorded. The day before there were 212 and the day after there were 206, and those lower death rates were fairly representative of other days. There were two such vastly different spikes in deaths. Similarly, there are spikes in daily cases, as well.

However, because there are outliers in the data, it doesn't mean that lock-downs don't work.

originally posted by: micpsi
Your general inference about the ineffectiveness of extreme lockdown shown by Peru in reducing the Covid-19 mortality is illogical. It ignores vital factors prevalent in Peru such as poor diet, poverty/unemployment, large families, 3rd world health system, etc. Lockdown does not guarantee low infection rates and/or mortality. It just minimises it against a backdrop of social factors that work in the opposite direction. In the case of Peru, these factors have combined effectively to weaken the effectiveness of lockdown - more so than for many other countries. It certainly does not demonstrate that extreme lockdown does not work. No one ever claimed that that was all that was needed to eliminate the virus. One cannot generalise from a 3rd-world country to what works (or does not work) for 1st-world countries. All one can say is that extreme lockdown did not work for Peru. The reasons for this have to do with Peru, not with the measures themselves.

If that is true you should be able to link me to a peer reviewed study showing that lockdowns are effective

Lockdowns Don’t Work April 21, 2020

Here’s the thing: there’s no evidence of lockdowns working. If strict lockdowns actually saved lives, I would be all for them, even if they had large economic costs. But the scientific and medical case for strict lockdowns is paper-thin.

a reply to: chr0naut

That all makes a lot of sense. It still doesn't counter the fact that there is very little evidence that lockdowns work. Just like with the HCQ, there are no peer reviewed studies that prove it works. The only evidence I know of that lockdowns work is anecdotal evidence.

One of the biggest reasons for the lockdowns (and masks) was asymptomatic carriers. Now asymptomatic carriers is looking like BS, you don't spread the virus till you feel sick. That was a good one though, very scary and everyone you see could be a carrier. Whoever thought that one up should be proud.

But the biggest problem I have with lockdowns (besides the economy) is that no one will be able to hide from this virus forever. It was very contagious and now even more contagious. You can not hide from an airborne virus unless you have pressure suites and bio lab containment (for yourself).

It is looking more and more like this virus produces lasting antibodies. I think herd immunity is the way to go.

We have flattened the curve. Hospitals have had half a year to learn how to handle this virus. High risk groups should be very careful and self isolate if they want to. Let's get The China Bug in the rear view mirror.

Looking more and more that the Virus spreads by means other than Human 🎃

a reply to: xuenchen

As in we all need to be vegan?

Or we need to keep 6 feet from our pets and put masks on them?

Did you see that diseased chicken will probable be showing up on you dinner plate soon?

originally posted by: xuenchen
Looking more and more that the Virus spreads by means other than Human 🎃

You're really on top of things!!

www.nature.com...

get those kids the puppy or kitties they've always wanted!!

I have no idea any more of truth, who's version of truth, so tired of this crap.

So where there is a high rate I think it is more because of the culture of how people live with each other. In these places there are a good number of people all under the same house and that causes the spread, so it starts at home in these cases.

Same thing with our slaughter houses that saw big spreads where the workers in many cases are all tightly living in the same place being immigrants, so it isn't the work that it spreads it is the living space.

The 6 foot thing is real...

a reply to: LookingAtMars

I had a feeling you’d get a bunch of naysayers in here.

Now, let’s do some research of our own.

www.healthline.com...

www.scientificamerican.com...

www.psychologytoday.com...

What are those links you say? They are proof that HAPPINESS BOOSTS YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM.

Maybe these poor folks are dying of the rona — because they’ve lost what little livelihood they have AND been stuck at effing home for almost a half of a freaking year!

Nah, couldn’t have anything to do with that....