Did Lockdowns and Social Distancing Really Save Us?
How Panic, Moral Certainty, and a Lack of Debate Cost Us More Than We Admit
In early 2020, I was sitting in a constitutional law lecture at Allard Hall when my phone lit up: Mysterious novel virus in Wuhan, China. Like everyone else, I assumed it would pass. Instead, the months ahead became a moral stress test for Western society — one we largely failed.
We like to tell ourselves that when a crisis hits, we rise to the occasion. That we debate openly, weigh costs and benefits, and make decisions with both courage and humility. But during COVID-19, two of the most sweeping measures — social distancing and lockdowns — revealed something different: our cultural reflex to choose fear over nuance, panic over debate, and moral slogans over transparent science.
The Overnight Consensus
Within weeks of the first cases outside China, governments shut schools, taped off playgrounds, shuttered businesses, and told families they couldn’t visit their grandparents. “Two meters” became gospel. The message was wrapped in moral language: Flatten the curve. Protect the vulnerable.
But where was the cost-benefit analysis?
Even before COVID, Canada’s 2018 pandemic preparedness guidelines warned that prolonged school closures, mass quarantine, and travel bans should be used with caution because of the massive downstream effects on mental health, education, the economy, and civil liberties.
Yet in March 2020, caution was abandoned in favor of sweeping measures — justified largely by high-death projections from models like Imperial College London’s, which predicted 500,000 deaths in the UK without intervention.
To many, dissent equaled indifference to human life. Epidemiologists who questioned the data were ignored. Economists warning about small business collapse were sidelined. Psychologists forecasting a wave of anxiety, loneliness, and suicidality were framed as reckless.
The Great Barrington Heresy
In October 2020, three respected scientists — from Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford — released the Great Barrington Declaration. Their idea: protect the vulnerable while allowing low-risk populations to resume normal life, building herd immunity while reducing collateral damage.
The reaction? Public shaming. Dr. Anthony Fauci called it “total nonsense.” Dr. Francis Collins, then NIH director, called for a “devastating takedown.” Facebook downranked its links. YouTube demonetized videos about it.
Here’s the thing: they might not have been entirely right. Their model had flaws. But they weren’t allowed to be wrong in the open. In a healthy society, ideas compete in the sunlight. In ours, they were treated like contagion.
What the Data Now Says
A Johns Hopkins meta-analysis later found that lockdowns — the more extreme form of social distancing — reduced COVID mortality by just 0.2% on average. The Lancet and JAMA published similar findings. Most reductions in transmission likely came from voluntary behavior changes, not mandates.
Meanwhile, the costs are undeniable:
U.S. math and reading scores dropped by the largest margins in 30 years.
Mental health crises surged, especially among youth.
Seniors died alone in care homes — not just from COVID, but from isolation and neglect.
And yet, there’s been no public inquiry into how these decisions were made. No apology for the harms. No promise to weigh trade-offs more seriously next time.
The Lockdown That Never Ended (Until It Did)
Lockdowns began as a temporary emergency measure to “buy time” for hospitals. Weeks became months. Months became seasons. The social contract — that this was short-term — was never renegotiated.
In Quebec, a literal curfew was introduced. In BC, parks were fenced off. In Ontario, police were given expanded powers to stop people on the street. These were wartime measures, applied in peacetime.
When people asked whether the cure was worse than the disease, they were treated as political enemies, not citizens seeking accountability.
The Human Toll We Didn’t Count
The World Bank estimates an additional 70 million people globally fell into extreme poverty during the pandemic — largely because of economic shutdowns. In Canada, record-breaking ER wait times coincided with delayed cancer surgeries and untreated chronic illness. BC recorded its deadliest years ever for drug overdoses.
These weren’t “unfortunate side effects.” They were predictable consequences of prioritizing one risk — viral spread — above all others.
The Missed Opportunity
Resilience isn’t built by hiding from the storm. It’s built by facing it, learning from it, and adapting.
That’s true for individuals, and it should be true for governments. But instead of trusting people with complexity, leaders simplified the message to: Stay home. Save lives. Don’t ask questions.
We could have modeled civic maturity. Instead, we modeled moral panic.
Where Do We Go From Here?
A mature society doesn’t avoid mistakes — it admits them. It doesn’t silence dissent — it invites it. If social distancing and lockdowns are ever considered again, we need:
Transparency — Publish the cost-benefit analysis alongside the case counts.
Sunset Clauses — No open-ended emergency powers without renewal votes.
Pluralism — Let competing ideas into the public square.
Proportionality — Match restrictions to real-time risk, not worst-case models.
If we fail to learn these lessons, the next crisis — whether climate, cyber, or health — will see us repeat the same mistakes. And next time, the damage may be worse.