Lockdown severity vs. COVID-19 deaths

Lockdown harder? Lockdown again? No lockdown? Data currently shows no correlation between lockdown severity and deaths per capita from COVID-19. Sweden imposed minimal restrictions on citizens, yet countries such as the UK, USA and Spain had strict lockdowns but have more deaths.

Countries around the world are once again facing up to the dilemma of whether to impose strict lockdowns on citizens to fight the continuing COVID-19 crisis. The issue is divisive on many fronts, not least due to the unprecedented and largely experimental nature of lockdowns. 

The Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford has been tracking national lockdown measures since the beginning of the pandemic in January, and has created an index of stringency. In the scatterplot above, the average stringency (from the time after the first death was recorded) is plotted against total number of COVID-19 deaths per capita for more than 150 countries.  

Inspection of the plot shows that there is no correlation between lockdown severity and deaths per capita. It must be remembered that correlation is not causation, and there are clearly many other factors which are not considered here. However, the lack of correlation seen here does raise serious questions about the effectiveness of strong national lockdowns in controlling the virus.