{"id":8871,"date":"2025-03-05T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T15:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=8871"},"modified":"2025-03-05T09:00:09","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T15:00:09","slug":"five-years-on-the-countries-that-never-locked-down-for-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/03\/05\/five-years-on-the-countries-that-never-locked-down-for-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Five years on: The countries that never locked down for Covid-19"},"content":{"rendered":"
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BBC<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the world found itself confined to their homes in March 2020 as Covid-19 spread at a blistering pace. Some countries didn’t impose any lockdown restrictions \u2013 so was their decision the right one?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March 2020, billions of people stared out through their windows at a world they no longer recognised. Suddenly confined to their homes, their lives had shrunk abruptly to four walls and computer screens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around the world, national leaders appeared on television, telling them to stay put \u2013 only leave the house to buy essential supplies or for once-daily exercise, maybe. It was a last-ditch attempt to curb the spread of a terrifying virus that had already killed many thousands of people<\/a> worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In London, theatre worker Tony Beckingham and his partner decided to use their daily exercise to cycle into the centre of the city one evening. “We thought it’d be really fun to see no-one around,” he says. It wasn’t. Places the pair knew well, like Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, perennially abuzz with people, were chillingly quiet. “It was really upsetting \u2013 instantly,” says Beckingham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This deletion of the public from city streets, venues and businesses first began in China<\/a>, where Covid-19 emerged. Quarantine orders were soon replicated in other countries after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic<\/a> on 11 March 2020. At no prior point in human history have people faced restrictions like this on such a scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BBC Most of the world found itself confined to their homes in March 2020 as Covid-19 spread at a blistering pace. Some countries didn’t impose any lockdown restrictions \u2013 so was their decision the right one? In March 2020, billions of people stared out through their windows at a world they no longer recognised. Suddenly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychological-and-sociological-impact"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8872,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8871\/revisions\/8872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}