https://www.iomcworld.org/articles/lifeyears-and-lockdowns-estimating-the-effects-on-covid19-and-cancer-outcomes-from-the-uks-response-to-the-pandemic.pdf
“A comparison between the life-years saved from the Covid-19 deaths prevented during the UK lockdown and the life-years that will be lost in the near future from excess cancer deaths due to lockdown indicates that preventing Covid-19 deaths through six-month lockdowns might result in more life-years being lost than saved. For example, if the average life-years saved from prevented Covid-19 deaths is eight and lockdown produced six months of cancer delays, anything less than around 22,000 Covid-19 deaths prevented would mean more life-years lost to cancer than saved from Covid-19. ”
Worth noting that the paper bases its calculation from an old measure of average age of covid deaths being 75, when actually in the UK it’s 80 - meaning that anything less than around 59,000 Covid-19 deaths prevented by six months of delayed cancer treatments would mean more life-years lost to cancer than saved from Covid-19.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-on-progress-to-address-covid-19-health-inequalities/appendix-d-further-data-and-evidence
Keep in mind that covid deaths in the UK have been about 75,000 per year, so it would require the measures taken to have almost halved amount of annual covid deaths, which seems unlikely given the age and vulnerability of most who have died and that there has been 131,000 excess deaths across the two years of pandemic:
i.e. / in sum with lockdowns delaying cancer treatments by six months, excess deaths from covid would have had to have been double what they actually were to counteract the lost life years from cancer; and I don’t think anywhere in the world has had excess deaths anywhere near as high as that, lockdowns or not.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19latestinsights/deaths
