Lockdowns are implemented on the basis of subjective value judgements about society’s priorities, not scientific proof. You can disagree with lockdowns without being anti-science.
There is very little evidence to show that stricter lockdowns are worth it. The countries that locked down quickly had favourable outcomes in the first wave. After Covid spread widely in a country, there has been no correlation between stricter measures and mortality. There is no data to show that the more sadistic measures (such as restrictions on outdoors exercise or outdoors mask wearing mandates) have yielded any benefit.
Despite the varying levels of lockdown, the second wave has followed largely the same curve across Europe. All European countries got Covid mostly under control by August, including Sweden with its far more relaxed approach, only to be hit by the second wave a couple months later. The passing of the first wave probably has a lot more to do with the normal seasonality of coronaviruses rather than the supposed success of the first lockdown. Similarly, the winter resurgence has not been prevented by any European country, no matter how strict or loose the restrictions were.
Contrary to the tired cultural stereotypes, the East Asian countries that got Covid under control owe their success to acting quickly rather than brutal lockdowns. Not even China had much of a lockdown outside of Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei province. The only place in the world where a strict, long term lockdown has actually led to the eradication of Covid is Victoria, Australia. This strategy failed in every other country that tried it.
Public morale and compliance with the restrictions is low. Poor compliance is used to explain away the very predictable failure of the November lockdown. Moralising is not productive. Policy makers need to take into account that they are designing rules for human society rather than perfectly compliant robots. If a plan fails because it did not take into account that humans would behave like humans, it was not a great plan to begin with.
Lockdowns are popular in theory, as long as they apply mostly to other people. Most of the public support lockdown in general but fail to comply even with the most basic anti-pandemic principles. Shockingly, only about 20% of people actually subject themselves to a full quarantine when they experience symptoms of Covid. The public’s expressed and revealed preferences on Covid are wildly different. This, of course, is incredibly hypocritical but also entirely human.
The political impetus to lock down is great. The early few months to 2021 will be grim no matter what. The public expect the government to take decisive action and we are in no mood to argue whether the decisive action being taken is actually helping.
It is deeply embedded in human psychology that sacrifice will bring results. It’s generally a useful belief to have as it inspires hard work and delayed gratification. The public wants to believe that by sacrificing so much we will achieve something, even if it’s as scientific as the Aztecs’ human offerings to keep the sun coming up in the morning.
Lockdown is best understood as a religious proposal. The foundation of religious belief is that sin must be punished with suffering, and that through suffering, better days may come. Society has sinned (has anyone actually complied with every single covid rule?) so we lock down as penitence and when the next Covid trough comes in the natural ebb and flow of viruses, we’ll all praise the grace of the gods of lockdown.
hvk 
PLease give us proof of what you claim. Is this opinion or established fact ?
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Hi, thanks for your comment.
There are a number of studies that show there is little or no correlation between severe measures and Covid mortality. There are referenced in the post above and also available here:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.11.20128520v1
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1.full-text
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-opinion-coronavirus-europe-lockdown-excess-deaths-recession/
Besides relying on the studies, my post makes the basic claim that all European countries managed to get their Covid case count under control by late summer and then experienced a severe second wave in the fall, despite having very different lockdown policies. This can be quickly verified via any publicly available data source, for example this one: https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-GB&mid=%2Fm%2F07ssc&gl=GB&ceid=GB%3Aen
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Fully agree with the premise that lockdowns (or any other political measure) reflect societal priorities, rather than scientific imperatives. Science can tell us what is. It cannot, by definition, tell us what should be. That’s the domain of ethics and philosophy.
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