Not sure how I'm being deceitful.

"It's just delaying the inevitable" is specifically what I'm arguing is completely false.

Btw, from the study you linked. It says countries like Sweden and SK without lockdowns fared as good as the countries in cluster 2 that locked down early on.

The study that said this was published two and a half months before the article claiming that Swedish COVID death rates were proportional to Italy's was published. I'm not sure if anything changed between when the study was being made and when the author of that article was writing it, I'd have to look at Sweden's COVID progression between late April/early may and late July to double check.

And you can find just as many studies that say they don't work. Here's a nice little collection of both sides of studies. It's a couple months old, but the point still stands.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/did-the-lockdowns-work/

This was very helpful to read, thanks for sharing! What I gather from the “Lockdowns Don’t Work” section is that Lockdowns aren’t what makes disease prevention a success, it’s social distancing and putting a stop to large gatherings of people. Based on what major medical institutions are saying staying sanitary and wearing a mask helps too but that’s not necessarily what these studies seem to be focusing on.

From my perspective Lockdown is meant to encourage social distancing and get people to stay home when they don’t need to be out and about. A key take away from those studies could be that what really works to get people to do these things is a change in individual behaviour along with a temporary stop to in person meetings at schools, businesses, and events rather than just completely closing businesses and places of operation, firmly telling people to stay home, and hoping for the best. Where I live people very much keep to themselves, are exhausted all the time from overworking, and are stuck in their own social bubbles. All of that was true even before the pandemic so I suppose it’s no surprise that death and infection rates in my area were so low compared to the rest of California when people were already inclined to behave in a way that prevents them from spreading COVID. From what I understand of Swedish culture people behave similarly there, and that could be one of the reasons they were so good about preventing the spread of COVID.