In order to derive a useful conclusion, an experiment typically needs to have some controls and ways of removing confounders. This article describes several merely-nominally-related situations and then bundles them all together to reach a too-neat conclusion.
As an example, the article undermines its own argument when discussing China's strict approach. It talks about what happened after lockdowns were lifted as though it meant that the lockdowns themselves were ineffective, and compares that to the US's poorly-adhered-to stay-at-home orders. But if a country is able to keep deaths low until a vaccine is developed, that decreases the total number of deaths. Whether that militates for lockdowns as strict as China's, I seriously doubt. But the article is so intent on making the (clearly false) point that lockdowns were totally useless that it cannot help but fail to grapple in any thoughtful way with the intensity and form of mitigations.
"I purchased travel insurance for my last trip and didn't even make a claim. Therefore the travel insurance was a failure."
The lockdowns failed because:
1. Covid wasn't as deadly as thought (although plenty deadly or disabling)
2. Covid was far more transmissible than even guessed at
3. The vaccines barely worked at blocking transmissibility, if at all
If Covid had been respiratory Ebola with the same transmissibility, you can bet we'd all be locking down instantly and staying locked down for years, no matter what the government said.
If the vaccines gave 90% of the population a year of immunity, after wide release, we'd only have to lock down for a couple weeks and then Covid would be a distant memory.
For years public officials either refused to admit this is a virus transmitted in the air or admitted it but acted like it isn't. Therefore: lockdowns for a contact-transmitted pathogen.
I remember even 2+ years (!) into the pandemic I was at a public library in Canada during winter which let you sit there for 30 mins max, because in between people they'd fastidiously alcohol-disinfect the computer area.
I asked them if I could keep the window open a crack while I was there and they refused.
I said "COVID isn't really transmitted by computer keyboards so much as being in a tiny community library with no ventilation".
"Sorry sir, I just follow the policy".
Lockdowns probably (or maybe) work: just not for COVID.
i think this is an extremely North America-centric view. As an Australian, the lockdowns were inconvenient at worst and were a key part in why we have such low mortality. from an outsiders perspective, US lockdowns were a shitshow and were too half-arsed to actually achieve anything
As an example, the article undermines its own argument when discussing China's strict approach. It talks about what happened after lockdowns were lifted as though it meant that the lockdowns themselves were ineffective, and compares that to the US's poorly-adhered-to stay-at-home orders. But if a country is able to keep deaths low until a vaccine is developed, that decreases the total number of deaths. Whether that militates for lockdowns as strict as China's, I seriously doubt. But the article is so intent on making the (clearly false) point that lockdowns were totally useless that it cannot help but fail to grapple in any thoughtful way with the intensity and form of mitigations.