Lockdown stringency vs. COVID-19 deaths per capita

Have lockdowns worked? We find no correlation between how strict a country’s lockdown is and the number of deaths per capita, which suggests other measures may be more important.
Stringency index from University of Oxford ranges from 0 (no lockdown measures) to 100 (severe lockdown measures).

Countries around the world have enforced lockdowns on their citizens in an attempt to combat the spread of COVID-19. Such methods are largely unprecedented and untested, and individual nations have applied lockdowns with varying degrees of severity. Is there any evidence that lockdowns are effective? And is a stricter lockdown the best way to curb the spread of the virus?

Our analysis of the data shows no correlation between lockdown stringency and COVID-19 deaths per capita. The figure above plots the average lockdown stringency index, devised by the University of Oxford, versus deaths per capita for countries across the globe. If lockdown was an effective means of combating the virus, we would expect to see a general trend in the scatter plot of deaths per capita falling with higher lockdown stringency. Instead, there appears to be no relation between the two statistics, suggesting that lockdowns may have been largely ineffective.