It is completely absurd. "Lockdowns" is shorthand for "people not coming into contact with other people in a way that spreads the virus". Because the virus cannot teleport through walls, lockdowns necessarily prevent transmission.
This is the sort of mis-use of logic that has led to so many problems.
"Lockdowns" is shorthand for "people not coming into contact with other people in a way that spreads the virus"
It's shorthand for a set of government policies that were intended to reduce contact, not eliminate it, because "not coming into contact with other people" is impossible. People still have to go to shops, hospitals, care homes, live with each other, travel around and so on even during a lockdown.
Your belief that it's "completely absurd" to say lockdowns don't affect mortality is based on the kind of abstract but false reasoning that consistently leads epidemiologists astray. Consider a simple scenario in which lockdowns have no effect that's still compatible with germ theory - you're exposed to the virus normally 10 times per week every week. With lockdowns that drops to 5 times a week. It doesn't matter. Everyone is still exposed frequently enough that there will be no difference in outcomes.
"Because the virus cannot teleport through walls, lockdowns necessarily prevent transmission"
Viruses can in fact teleport through walls: "The SARS virus that infected hundreds of people in a 33-story Hong Kong apartment tower probably spread in part by traveling through bathroom drainpipes, officials said yesterday in what would be a disturbing new confirmation of the microbe's versatility."
you're exposed to the virus normally 10 times per week every week. With lockdowns that drops to 5 times a week.
In this scenario, lockdowns work fine, but are insufficient! Perhaps with stringent use of N95 masks during contactless food ration delivery it can be reduced to 0.05 times per week. Then the pandemic ends and we go back to normal.
Also, if you only go out half as often, that's not exactly a lockdown either. A lockdown is people not coming into contact with other people in a way that spreads the virus. It's not people still often coming into contact with other people in a way that spreads the virus but not as often as before.
You don't appear to realize that food gets to your front door via a large and complex supply chain that involves many people doing things physically together at almost every point. Your definition of a lockdown is physically impossible even for cave men to sustain, let alone an advanced civilization. It isn't merely a matter of "works but insufficient".
This kind of completely irrational reasoning is exactly why lockdowns are now discredited. The fact that the response to "here's lots of data showing that lockdowns didn't work" is to demand an impossible level of lockdown that would kill far more people than COVID ever could simply through supply chain collapse alone, really does say it all.
> A lockdown is people not coming into contact with other people in a way that spreads the virus. It's not people still often coming into contact with other people in a way that spreads the virus but not as often as before.
That might be a definition issue. Here in Germany, we had several lockdowns. Many (most?) countries would say we had no lockdown at all.
The question isn’t whether lockdowns with compliance work, the question is how effective is lockdown as a policy. If you create a lockdown policy, what is the impact of that?
