Of course they did. It would be extremely surprising if they did not. But this - like the various origin hypothesis - has also been thoroughly politicized. I really hope that we won't see a repeat of COVID, but there is a very good chance that there will be. After all, habitat destruction continues unabated and whatever wildlife that remains is more and more forced into contact with humans. This substantially increases the chances of more of such outbreaks. And if how we dealt with this one is any guide the next one could be much worse. Very little solidarity, bad communications, lots and lots of bad actors, profiteering (both by 'the good' and 'the bad') and politics. So now we have a whole pile of people who have been brainwashed to distrust vaccination (even vaccination of kids is still well below where it was before), and a ton of conspiracy fueled organizations that are ready and primed to expand on the next wave that they can ride to more power.
It would be extremely surprising for a study commissioned by a government, performed by scientists paid by that government to draw a conclusion that would disagree with the government’s position on the topic. Especially when the topic is highly politicized.
> When assessed individually, there was positive – if limited – evidence of transmission reduction from many of the NPIs used in the pandemic, the review found. However, evidence of a positive effect was clear when countries used combinations of NPIs.
So I take this to mean they found a statistically significant effect, but not much more? I skimmed the Royal Society report but didn't see the numbers backing their claim.
Is there good proof that interventions did anything besides maybe slow the virus down? The virus mutated despite mitigations (perhaps a good thing), people were still dying by the hundreds per day after the vaccine came out (in the U.S.), the whole world caught omicron (even communist China had to give up lockdowns), and word is the new variant evades prior immunity (but isn't more virulent).
Would we have ended up in pretty much the same place without all the imperfect mandates and lockdowns?
It's no surprise that social distancing is the most clearly effective intervention here. Obviously no virus can spread without some kind of contact.
It's also no surprise than N95 masks are significantly more effective than "surgical type" masks or plain cloth masks. However the study does not address how much better masking is than not masking. There is no quantitative data at all, from what I can see. Telling me mask mandates reduce the spread of the virus is not meaningful until I know how much by.
The problem with distancing with a very contagious disease is that it only works for a time. The title would be more honest if it said "prevents transmission for a while". Which was always the goal to begin with, to flatten the curve and not to overload the system. But preventing, as in never happening, the infection of a SRAS disease, even with vaccines, was already known to be impossible well before this pandemic happened. (Remember this critic used to be directed against the "Trump vaccine" and against racism in the China Towns being avoided).
They do a non quantitative literature review and explicitly disclaim any consideration of cost/benefit, even at the level of evaluating deaths now vs later. It's unclear who this is supposed to convince.
It's too bad that the report has a quite vague description of its methodology and data sources and analysis. From what I read it's mostly a qualitative assessment more than anything else.
Also the big elephant in the room is conflict of interest.
While the report states "by a group of expert scientists convened by the Royal Society, independently from the UK Government", they're all funded by the government (most public health experts are) including the Royal Society itself. The next statement confirms that the UK public health office was involved in the drafting of the document: "The Royal Society is most grateful for early comments from the then UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, in helping the Society to refine the concept of this report and ensuring it has value for future science advisers and decision makers.
I can't help of thinking that the government asked experts they fund to investigate itself and they found nothing wrong.
