Abstract
Flaxman et al. (Nature, 8 June 2020,
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2405-7, 2020) infer that
non-pharmaceutical interventions conducted by several European countries
considerably reduced effective reproduction numbers and saved millions
of lives. We show that their method is ill-conceived and that the
alleged effects are artefacts. Moreover, we demonstrate that the United
Kingdom?s lockdown was both superfluous and ineffective.