Author and statistician William M. Briggs argues that lockdowns don’t work because they force people to gather in fewer places like supermarkets and therefore spread viruses faster than if people were allowed to spread out.
Writing for LockdownSkeptics.org, Briggs states, “A lockdown will spread this bug faster than allowing people to remain at liberty.”
The author notes that a lockdown is not the same as a quarantine. Under lockdown, people only have a limited selection of venues at which they are allowed to gather, meaning those locations are busier and therefore make a virus more transmissible.
“Lockdowns are merely forced gatherings,” writes Briggs. “People in lockdown are allowed to venture forth from their dwellings to do “essential” activities, like spending money at oligarch-run stores. These stores are collection points, where people are concentrated. Some are allowed to go to jobs, such as supporting oligarch-run stores.”
Briggs notes that lockdown concentrates people into fewer areas outside before it “then it forces them back inside to mingle with a vengeance.”
“It’s clear that our 100% transmissible bug will spread much faster when people are forced to spend more time indoors with each other. Once one person gets it, he will spread it to those at his home immediately. If people were at liberty, and therefore more separated, the bug would still spread to everybody, but more slowly (the speed here is relative),” he writes.
“Lockdowns force people together. The venues they are allowed to venture to are restricted, and therefore concentrate contact, and they force people inside their homes where it’s obvious contact time increases. Lockdowns concentrate contact spaces and times,” concludes Briggs.
Briggs’ assertion is also backed up by how people spend their leisure time under lockdown. With most shops, cinemas and other entertainment venues closed, people in major cities pour en masse into parks or beaches where ‘social distancing’ is virtually impossible because there are so many people around.
In London, rates of COVID-19 infection were higher after the November lockdown than before it started.
