Did COVID-19 infections decline before UK lockdown?

What the results showis that, in the absence of strong assumptions, the currently most reliable data strongly suggest that the decline in infections in England and Wales began before lockdown.

Furthermore, such a scenario wouldbe consistent with the infection profile in Sweden, which began its decline in fatal infections shortly afterthe UK, but did so on the basis of measures well short of lockdown.

These facts have implications for the policies to be adopted in the coming autumn, particularly giventhe peculiar ethical issues associated with lockdown. 

For example, plausible estimates of the life lossburden from an unmitigated COVID-19 epidemic in the UK are about 2 weeks per person1.

A plausible lower bound on the UK life loss from the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath is 7 weeks per person2.The economic shock from lockdown is substantially larger than 2008. Similarly the implied willingness to pay to save a life year from COVID-19 appears to be an order of magnitude higher than the usual UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence threshold used for any other disease.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.02090.pdf

Simon N. Wood University of Bristol, UK