Covid Lockdowns 'Were Worth It', Argues Infectious Disease Expert on CNN (cnn.com) 274
A new book argues lockdowns during the pandemic were "a failure." But in response CNN published an opinion piece disagreeing — written by physician/infectious disease expert Kent Sepkowitz from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York — who argues "You bet it was worth it."
[Authors Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean] consider the lockdown a single activity stretched across the entire pandemic; in contrast, I would distinguish the initial lockdown, which was crucial, from the off-and-on lockdowns as therapies, vaccines and overall care improved. There is an argument to be made that these were not anywhere near as effective... One only had to work in health care in New York City to see the difference between early 2020, when the explosion of cases overwhelmed the city, versus later in 2020 when an effective therapy had been identified, supplies and diagnostic testing had been greatly improved (though still completely inadequate) and the makeshift ICUs and emergency rooms had been set in place. It was still a nightmare to be sure, but it was a vastly more organized nightmare.
The "short-term benefits" at the start of the pandemic are simple to characterize: Every infection that was delayed due to the lockdowns was a day to the good, a day closer to the release of the mRNA vaccines in December 2020, a less-hectic day for the health care workers, a day for clinical trials to mature. Therefore, the authors' statement that lockdowns "were a mistake that should not be repeated" because they had no "purpose other than keeping hospitals from being overrun in the short-term" is to me a fundamental misunderstanding of the day-to-day work that was being done. Most disturbing to me about this assessment and the others that have come along are the minimal mention of the death and debility the infection caused. A reminder for those who have forgotten just how brutal the pandemic was: Worldwide there have been 7 million deaths. In the U.S., there have been more than a million deaths, millions have some post-infection debility and many health care workers remain profoundly demoralized. [By these figures the U.S., with 4.2% of the world's population, had 14% of Covid fatalities.]
In this context, many of the outcomes of concern listed by Nocera and McLean — suicidal thoughts in teens, alcoholism and drug use increases, violence — are as easily explained by this staggering death toll as by the cabin fever brought on by lockdowns. Once again: About 1 out of every 350 Americans died in the Covid-19 pandemic. Another way to consider the impact of so many deaths is examination of life expectancy. Of note, life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2020 (1.8 years) and 2021 (0.6 years), the sharpest drop since the 1920s; per the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 74% of the drop was attributed to Covid-19... To fall more than two years so precipitously requires the deaths of many in their 30s and 40s and 50s, as occurred with the first year of the pandemic.
The "short-term benefits" at the start of the pandemic are simple to characterize: Every infection that was delayed due to the lockdowns was a day to the good, a day closer to the release of the mRNA vaccines in December 2020, a less-hectic day for the health care workers, a day for clinical trials to mature. Therefore, the authors' statement that lockdowns "were a mistake that should not be repeated" because they had no "purpose other than keeping hospitals from being overrun in the short-term" is to me a fundamental misunderstanding of the day-to-day work that was being done. Most disturbing to me about this assessment and the others that have come along are the minimal mention of the death and debility the infection caused. A reminder for those who have forgotten just how brutal the pandemic was: Worldwide there have been 7 million deaths. In the U.S., there have been more than a million deaths, millions have some post-infection debility and many health care workers remain profoundly demoralized. [By these figures the U.S., with 4.2% of the world's population, had 14% of Covid fatalities.]
In this context, many of the outcomes of concern listed by Nocera and McLean — suicidal thoughts in teens, alcoholism and drug use increases, violence — are as easily explained by this staggering death toll as by the cabin fever brought on by lockdowns. Once again: About 1 out of every 350 Americans died in the Covid-19 pandemic. Another way to consider the impact of so many deaths is examination of life expectancy. Of note, life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2020 (1.8 years) and 2021 (0.6 years), the sharpest drop since the 1920s; per the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 74% of the drop was attributed to Covid-19... To fall more than two years so precipitously requires the deaths of many in their 30s and 40s and 50s, as occurred with the first year of the pandemic.
Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:4, Funny)
This should be good. *munch* *munch*
Re:Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:5, Insightful)
Distancing and mass-lockdowns sure can't have any negative impacts transmission wise. The whole thing depends on how much other negative impacts it has compared to the benefits.
Re:Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. And when you do not reliably know, you err on the side of caution. That said, as you state, it is clear that distancing and lock-downs have proven benefits (at the very least from earlier epidemics and pandemics) in a pandemic situation, it is just not precisely clear how much.
To err on the side of caution means to realize that _can_ (if there is the will to do it) recover "urban economies", but dead people are dead and nothing can be done about it.
Re:Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that most people only see their personal experience of the lockdowns.
If they got mild COVID with no lingering effects (or are just in denial about them), they probably think lockdowns weren't worth it. If they lost three family members and are disabled by long COVID, they probably think the lockdowns weren't enough.
Even the economists can't predict the long term effects of long COVID, or how many people will have it in say 10 years time.
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Indeed. What most people also do not understand that fighting an ongoing catastrophe based on insufficient data will always be quite a bit off and that there are trigger-points that must be avoided at all cost because they will make things much, much worse. In the case of a pandemic this, for example, the medical system collapsing and people deciding to start running. That must not happen under any circumstances. The thing is, you cannot manage a pandemic well. You can manage it somewhat acceptable or you c
Re:Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:5, Informative)
The big thing you're ignoring in all this - and to be fair, most people like to ignore - is that getting COVID wasn't just about whether you lived or died from it. The early strains had much more severe illness, with relatively young people often being sicker and then taking months to fully recover.
Now that we've got more data on Long-COVID, it looks like the Long-COVID rates were somewhere in the 40-60% rate for the original strain and steadily went down until landing around a couple percent for Omicron.
It's hard to say what the death rate would've been if we just let COVID rip through everyone, but it's really, really clear that we would've had a ton of really sick people and a big problem with long term health problems from it. Between the vaccines and the milder forms of the virus, the later infections were far far less severe than the early ones.
Re:Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:5, Insightful)
Sweden is #42 on the list of deaths per million population. It's behind the US, the UK, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, Spain, France, Austria, a good deal of Europe really. Their death rate was higher early on, but at best, that means the other countries only delayed total deaths without significantly reducing them.
Peru (#1) had ten times the death rate of Iceland (#123). Sweden's deaths/mil pop is about 28% higher than Finland's, 63% higher than Denmark's, and about 2.3 times Norway's, so your "10x the death rate" is bullshit. And Sweden's economy suffered a lot less than their neighbors', and recovered a lot more quickly.
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Now I'm confused. Did their lack of a lockdown kill 10x the number of people as their neighbors (but really less than most of Europe) or was their lockdown more restrictive (but the restrictions were recommendations rather than mandates)?
It's almost like it's more about hating on Sweden for not toeing the party line than anything to do with the pandemic.
Re:Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:4, Informative)
Why did the US have a mortality rate so much higher than other more densely populated countries? Did they under report? Did we over report? I honestly have no doubts that we over reported. We took away a huge amount of our hospital system's income and gave them monetary incentive to over report COVID cases. I personally know of 8 people who died and were misreported. One was from smoke inhalation, another from pneumonia, etc. three of them actually fought the hospitals and got the death certificates changed.
I know two people who had to fight to get accurate death certificates. One died of heart disease, the other from pancreatic cancer. Neither's time of death was affected by COVID at all.
The reason that happened was that the US institutionalized overreporting. First, they prohibited hospitals from doing any kind of elective procedure (like oncology!), which is their bread and butter, putting many hospitals on, or over the edge of bankruptcy (which many hospitals aren't too far from on a good day). Then, they paid thousands of dollars for every COVID case reported, and thousands more for every death. A lot of hospitals were literally faced with fraudulently reporting COVID deaths or going out of business.
And it was institutionalized by the CDC. I saw their official reporting criteria, on the cdc.gov web site, for COVID deaths. If the the doctor believed the patient had symptoms consistent with COVID (not knew or confirmed, just believed), it was legitimate to report it as a COVID death. Literally, a 90 year old patient with emphysema from smoking six packs of cigarettes a day who got run down by a bus could - legitimately - be reported as a COVID death and the hospital would be paid thousand of dollars for it
Yeah, the US overreported COVID deaths.
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No, it doesn't make sense. But that's what happened. Why? Politics. There was a lot of political gain to be had (in the form of more control over the population) by exaggerating the crisis and inciting as much panic as possible.
Welcome to US politics. It's evil.
Re:Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:4, Funny)
Also, someone who has Greta Thunberg in the .sig really isn't in a position to criticize anyone else about not making sense.
Re: Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:3)
Grand parents will die regardless at some point. Everybody dies, nobody becomes suicidal over that.
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Re:Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:5, Interesting)
Distancing - and by extension lockdowns to enforce said distancing - is absolutely supported by scientific rigor.
Viruses are not magic. They require contact. They are physical objects moving from one physical host to another through physical space. They do not spontaneously materialize in the lungs of random people who had no contact with someone already infected.
Distancing when done correctly severely limits the potential of the virus to spread. When the spread is limited time is bought to find a better and more permanent solution - such as the vaccine. To think otherwise is like not bothering to keep a gushing wound closed and under pressure until the ambulance arrives because meh, the ambulance is the actual fix so why do anything before then?
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There is no "long term damage" that is less fixable than people being dead. Do you not respect human life?
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> You either can't tell the difference or you're lying.
You're right. When I see this I get confused. I guess I don't really understand compassion from the eyes of the left:
"Paralympian trying to get wheelchair ramp says Veterans Affairs employee offered her assisted dying"
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politic... [ctvnews.ca]
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"This one dubious claim is so unusual that it made the news must be representative!"
It's amazing you haven't drowned yourself in the shower, mouth agape wondering where the water comes from...
Oh, and there is zero evidence that the event in question ever happened. Is that really the best you can do? Pathetic!
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> "one dude"
It was a woman by the way, so clearly you didn't even take the time to skim the article. (typical)
> overinflate or outright lie about something in way that will grab the most attention.
OK. Let's look at (1) something the government is openly admitting to and (2) is not a single person but a demographic then...
"Canada Will Legalize Medically Assisted Dying For Eligible People Addicted to Drugs"
https://www.vice.com/en/articl... [vice.com]
Drug treatment programs cost more than a one-time euthanasia "tr
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Yes, to a point, at the beginning of the pandemic. But at what point do these policies leave you with more long-term destruction than you were initially trying to prevent? Two years in? Three years in? NYC was contemplating another lock down just three months ago.
In the US the value of a human life is set at around $8-10 million. I saw one study [usc.edu] claiming about $14 trillion in damages to the US economy from Covid by the end of 2023. That would be worth it if about 1.5 million lives were saved by our actions.
Also, we know there would have been economic damage even if there was no shutdown. The loss of life itself would have reduced economic output, along with individual decisions to eat out and congregate less. I personally would say if even 500k lives were lost then
Re: Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:3, Insightful)
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The main benefit of Covid19 and the lockdowns was that Management finally had to remove the bobble-heads that kept smacking them with limbs from the Stupid tree, and embrace remote work. 2020 to-date have been the greatest years in my entire working career.
When I started to see those fucking idiotic Return to Office mandates, my wife and I started praying for another pandemic -- and I'm an athiest! Fortunately for me, my workplace seems to be expanding remote work support, as we are more productive working
Re:Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:5, Informative)
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Thousands of young people died and tens of thousands lives were ruined by long covid. Don't brush it off so quickly.
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Here in reality, things we different. It was a lot more than just 'vulnerable old people' and a few 'sickly young people' that we affected. Many healthy people, young and old, were killed or suffering from long-term effects that could possibly be with them for the rest of their lives.
The fact that you'd have allowed this to be far worse to avoid the fairly mild economic impacts makes you look like an absolute monster.
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Despite all of your hoping and wishing, there was no recession. On inflation, we did better than the rest of the world. Unemployment is at an all-time low and wages are finally starting to rise after 40+ years of stagnation.
Reality doesn't agree with your bullshit. Cry harder.
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https://thehill.com/changing-a... [thehill.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
https://www.miamiherald.com/ne... [miamiherald.com]
And of course, many more didn;t die, but suffered horribly. Here's a fit, healthy person who had to be put into an induced coma, for example:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/30... [cnn.com]
You can do your own googling, there's endless cases like these.
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Young people had no issues with Covid
Statistically, yes. Few young people died. However, they were carriers and could be asymptomatic when doing so. Thus, not only would the elderly and those with compromised immune systems contract covid and die, but other people would likewise contract covid and become sick, even if they didn't die. That means more people not working because they're sick which also means more people contracting long covid [pennmedicine.org].
There's a reason people who get the flu are told to stay home f
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You're lying. We all know that you're lying. It's pointless to lie when we all knows that you're lying. Stop it.
Re: Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:2)
> Most of it was older unhealthy people.
And the rest were older, very healthy people made unhealthy by a virus.
> We locker down the entire country instead of just telling old people to stay home
In this case, "older people" is over 45 and comprised a significant amount of the workforce. Whining that you can't go to a movie because you don't care about the massive deaths from "older sickly people" is you in a nutshell. Not a monster yourself, but you clearly have followed fucking monsters in the past fe
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Wow, what a giant piece of shit you are! Yes, some people had very mild cases, others were dead in a few days. Others still were seriously ill for months and continue to suffer long-term consequences.
You know this, but continue to tell the same bullshit lies that have, without question, killed countless people. That makes you a murderer. That's not hyperbole. That's a simple statement of fact.
Re: Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:2)
ROFL bullshit. Those lies didn't work when they were first made up, they don't work now either.
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You probably still think the kid in Alberta that tested positive for covid while in hospice for his cancer died of covid. Even after the fact the family made that government retract their attempt to use his death to fear monger, people like you carry the torch for the lie.
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Oh, look at that! In a state known for intentionally inaccurate covid reporting, a report from a media outlet known for repeating lies and propaganda, a single instance of an in accurate record.
This is low-effort, even for you. Try harder, troll.
Re:Grabs bucket of popcorn (Score:5, Insightful)
1 million deaths in the US
US population: 340 million. 0,29% of the US population.
A survival rate of 99.97%
Is fundamentally incompatible with the above, by an order of magnitude. Especially given that a majority delayed infection until after vaccination (most of the deaths were among the minority who were infected pre-vaccination), and some still have not been infected at all.
And on the above topic - the aside that Slashdot added to the article:
This is a misunderstanding. There are 7 million recorded deaths. While medical recordkeeping is good in the developed world, and death certificates match up well to excess deaths, testing and recordkeeping is generally poor in the developing world, and these numbers do not match up - excess deaths were generally vastly higher than death certificates in such countries. The 95% confidence interval estimate for total COVID deaths in the first 1 1/2 years - recorded and unrecorded - is 18,1m to 33,3m [economist.com], with a mean estimate of 27,3m. 0,34% of the global population.
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Do you get off on lying? The _actual_ COVID survival rate in the US is 98.2% https://apnews.com/article/fac... [apnews.com]
And that is with ICUs _not_ overwhelmed. With ICUs overwhelmed (i.e. no lock-downs) it goes down to 95% or so. That is in the area where civilization breaks down and everybody runs. Oh, and in 60 years and older _without_ other illnesses it is also only 95%: https://www.thelancet.com/jour... [thelancet.com]
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How you present things matters. People, like NFN_NLN, are really, really, stupid and generally don't understand percentages. If you say something like "95% survive" they'll get think it's nothing to worry about and go around licking doorknobs. If you say "it kills 1 out of every 20 people", then they get nervous.
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I would worry at 95% survival rate IF it was randomized within the population. But I still wouldn't lock people down.
It wouldn't be a civilization threatening event until you hit 15-20%. So balancing civilian safety over civilian rights shouldn't even enter people's minds until then.
In reality though we had NONE of those scenarios. (1) it was 99%+ survival rate and (2) it was mainly contained to the elderly.
What we have a bored people LARPing out their fantasies that they are survivors of some close-call
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Social distancing and lockdowns have a *long* history of suppressing epidemics. Literally going back centuries.
And the death rates in states with social distancing and lockdowns is about 2200/mil (except the 3 entry states where covid ran wild for months) while the death rates in states without social distancing is about 4600/mil (except Alaska).
You may say, "I *choose* to have freedom and higher death rates" but you are ignoring the data when you say social distancing didn't slow it down. If nothing els
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By every previous definition of vaccine, did the COVID-19 injections meet the criteria to be lumped in with all the previous successful vaccines?
Proven theory? Check.
Very extensive animal models ? Check. (In fact routine in animals. Hence things like no transmission to others reliably known.)
Human testing? Check.
Worked in practice? Check.
What more do you want? Some decree from God?
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Pass the popcorn, please.
I believe it for the first one (Score:5, Insightful)
The March-May 2020 lockdowns were absolutely necessary. Maybe measures into June as well. After that it seems like everything had diminishing returns. Here we had a second lockdown in July-September which was excessive. It is interesting to look at the efficacy of measures later on in the Pandemic though based on virility and mortality of the strains at the time, and hard facts really need to be published on this to help keep us better informed.
After that it was all political (Score:5, Insightful)
If it hadn't been an election year more sane policymaking might have prevailed.
The bottom line is that public health measures next time will be ignored en masse. You'll need the guns out and the roadblocks and such. Let's hope no more pandemics in the next 40 or so years, which should be about the timeframe for enough people to not remember this.
Re: After that it was all political (Score:4, Interesting)
If it hadn't been an election year, the same exact thing would have happened. This claim is testable because in Massachusetts where I lived, and in Rhode Island and New Jersey and Virginia and New York it was not an election year for the governors who pushed the lockdowns first and hardest.
For a time it looked like they were racing to see who would lock down hardest.
Cuomo announced an X week lockdown, so Northam announced an X+1 week lockdown!
Gina Raimondo sent the National Guard around Rhode Island looking for New York license plates, so Charlie Baker* announced that anyone entering Massachusetts needed to register with the State Police or Public Health Department or some damn thing.
The next gubernatorial election cycle, only Virginia issued a rebuke to the Democratic Party. And even then, it could be argued that was a fluke having to do with McAuliffe's poor handling of the debates and a very public shitstorm in Loudon County over immigration and transgender bathrooms than with anything having to do with covid policies.
Re: After that it was all political (Score:2)
*Good old Charlie Baker. The last good Republican. Who ruled by decree for 15 solid months.
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In another time there might have been debate over the best way to deal with the pandemic, but we wouldn't have had mainstream catering to fringe notions like denying that it even existe
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There was some wilful overenforcement, at least with later restrictions. When my comunidad autónoma imposed weekend municipal boundary restrictions, I was turned back from walking for exercise in the green space within the municipal boundaries by a policía nacional who told me I should get my exercise by walking alongside the 6-lane ring-road instead, clean air be damned. Her reasoning for the overenforcement was that she couldn't follow me to ensure that I didn't go beyond the boundary; I thi
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The March-May 2020 lockdowns were absolutely necessary.
I agree they were necessary. But what you do during those lockdowns is just as important. Building up testing infrastructure and contact tracing needs to be done during that time. Here in the US there was a lot of talk about doing these things, but very little was actually done. I don't know anyone that was actually contacted by a contact tracer. There were a lot of people with time on their hands that should have been put to work contact tracing.
Lockdowns can only be done for a finite amount of time
Missing context (Score:5, Informative)
This argument overlooks the fact that Mr. Covid, Cuomo, had presided over a years-long campaign to reduce the number of hospital beds in NYS [nypost.com], and him and his predecessors, to shut down community hospitals [nysna.org].
Perhaps if there had been more hospital beds, and more facilities, Cuomo might not have ordered infected patients into nursing homes [apnews.com], where the most vulnerable resided. Or he might have anyway - those nursing home operators were major contributors.
Nope, the lockdowns were a band-aid solution to the symptoms of the pursuit of profits.
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Nope, the lockdowns were a band-aid solution to the symptoms of the pursuit of profits.
It matters why the lockdowns were necessary, but for the sake of this particular argument that's only the why and not the whether.
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I'll further add that this was known since studies on healthcare consolidation were popping up in the early 2000s (although the focus then was the quadrupling of time it took to receive emergency care for large swaths of the country). It's not only the loss of critical care beds, but where those beds are concentrated; further exacerbated by a one-size-fits-all of the lockdowns.
Quarantine is a basic protocol of medicine, but it was interesting to compare to the early days of the AIDS epidemic when not much w
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Or he might have anyway - those nursing home operators were major contributors.
So the nursing home operators wanted their customers decimated? That does not make sense.
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Nothing right-wing nuts say makes any sense. They don't care.
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Nope, the lockdowns were a band-aid solution to the symptoms of the pursuit of profits.
When you injure yourself a band-aid is quite useful as it limits the amount of blood you spill everywhere. Just because covid lockdowns were a band-aid solution and you had other underlying problems doesn't mean they weren't quite valuable. Most of the world did not have Mr Covid Cuomo. Anytime you point to one specific local issue to counter a global problem consider that maybe your view is a bit too narrow.
This isn't an argument (Score:3)
Countries that do lockdowns recover faster and better and are better off regardless of the pandemic in question. The only reason this was at all conquerorsal in America is that there was a presidential election going on in the at the time Republican candidate new and unless he could force the economy to stay open until after the election he was going to lose because his mismanagement of the crises would become too obvious.
The goal was to keep everything running just long enough for that candidate to safely win reelection. Absolutely nothing happened to you, me or your families mattered after that. Because it's like that line in 1984 about how the entire point of it all is power. We're just numbers on a spreadsheet
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The only reason this was at all conquerorsal in America is that there was a presidential election
Lockdowns were controversial in almost every country where they were tried around the world.
And for the same stupid reasons (Score:2, Insightful)
Right wing economic policies do not work. They always just boiled down to trickle down economics and prosperity Gospel. So right wing governments need some other thing
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In places that don't have right wing extremists as a viable political party the lockdowns were not controversial
You mean, like Sweden?
Lockdowns too late (Score:5, Interesting)
The same lockdown starting and ending three weeks earlier would have saved 10,000s of lives. But it would have been politically impossible because instead of 40,000 dying in the first phase it would have been only 10,000 and Covid would have looked a lot more harmless
Without lockdown the numbers would have grown and grown until people would have stayed at home because they were too afraid to leave. So voluntary lockdown caused by fear.
Hospitals were close to overwhelmed. And they never could treat Covid - they only could try to keep you alive until your immune system can fight back. That didnâ(TM)t work for about 190,000 in the UK. With much higher numbers of cases and hospitals not able to try to keep everyone alive, a much higher percentage would have died.
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And that is the problem with voters: They do not understand anything even only slightly complicated.
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
> the authors' statement that lockdowns "were a mistake that should not be repeated" because they had no "purpose other than keeping hospitals from being overrun in the short-term"
That purpose alone would be justification. A full hospital isn't just unavailable for people with COVID, it becomes unavailable for everything else, too.
I like knowing if I'm seriously injured or sick that my local ER has some capacity to handle me, and the hospital attached to it can take me when I leave the ER.
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Statements like these tell you a lot about the authors. Seatbelts are clearly a mistake because they do nothing other than prevent you from flying around during a crash.
Social media was it's usual dumpster fire and official statements in the US seemed a little mixed, but most places it was clear to anyone not spending too much time on the internet that the purpose of staying home as much as possible ("lockdown", lol) was to limit the peaks, not to prevent infection forever.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
People love to bring up Sweden. Usually ignorant people.
They had very high compliance levels with basic protocols for transmission reduction. They didn't have a large population of people refusing to wear masks and gathering in numbers just to stick it to the libs.
And they didn't do very well at all compared to Norway. (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14034948211047137)
So when you bring up Sweden you're really proving that lockdowns, masks, eventually vaccination, and all the other things you probably are railing against worked. You truly have your Freedumb(tm).
Same as Iraq War (Score:2)
hmmmm (Score:2)
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Obviously (Score:3)
Anybody that looks at actual data and sees what is in there and what the scenarios would have been that were sometimes nearly avoided, comes to the same conclusions. The "COVID does not exist" and "the vaccine was worthless" crowd simply lacks the intellectual honesty to understand things like this. Put them in charge and see things going downhill, because they apply the same level of skill and insight to other questions as well.
My apologies top these people, but they have managed to be so far off now that they do not qualify for rational dialog anymore. They just do not live in the real world.
Absolutely worth it. (Score:5, Funny)
Was Covid bad? Not if you don't believe it was bad (Score:5, Interesting)
On one hand, you have statistics saying a million people died of Covid in the U.S. alone. On the other hand, some people have feelings. I'd like to share the story of my uncle Bert, who died "with" Covid in Alberta, my aunt Elaine, and my father Don who lives 5000 km away in Hawaii. All three of them became anti-vaxxers after the pandemic started because their right-wing sources told them about the evils of vaccines in general and (once mRNA vaccines got the EUA) mRNA vaccines in particular.
A key part of this belief system is that Covid isn't so bad (as long as you have ivermectin anyway). My aunt wrote this on Facebook:
So: Bert has fallen repeatedly in the garden. This time when he fell, passers-by called an ambulance. When he got to the hospital, he was tested for Covid and it came back positive. Perhaps due to this, Elaine wasn't allowed to see him (she was also infected, but had a very mild case). Later, he was placed on a ventilator (a common treatment for severe Covid). Don, from 5000 km away, diagnoses him with a stroke. The hospital told Elaine he died of Covid, but Don still thinks he died of a stroke. Elaine is inclined to believe Don, though she told me later, her voice breaking, that maybe if they had allowed her to give him ivermectin, he'd still be alive today.
And you know what, I do wish staff had given him ivermectin. He would've still died, but at least Elaine wouldn't be left with an impression that doctors are the enemy. As for my father--the man I remember is gone, replaced a mystery man who sent me messages reciting the talking points given to him by the TV, never with evidence to back it up. He ignored all of my replies. Now we don't talk anymore.
Re:Put a gun to the head of 1/3rd of your economy (Score:4, Interesting)
Here ya go. [imgur.com] Whine that more people weren't killed.
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Indeed. And incidentally, the final death-toll was 1.8% in the US for COVID: https://apnews.com/article/fac... [apnews.com]
Some people have no clue how fragile civilization actually is.
Re:Put a gun to the head of 1/3rd of your economy (Score:5, Informative)
The link points to an image with a bunch of text. (There are a lot of problems with this...) This is what it says:
How can a disease with 1% mortality shut down the United States?
Franklin Veaux - Updated July 11, 2020
There are two problems with this question.
1. It neglects the law of large numbers; and
2. It assumes that one of two things happen: you die or you're 100% fine.
The US has a population of 328,200,000. If one percent of the population dies, that's 3,282,000 people dead.
Three million people dead would monkey wrench the economy no matter what. That more than doubles the number of annual deaths all at once.
The second bit is people keep talking about deaths. Deaths, deaths, deaths. Only one percent die! just one percent! One is a small number! No big deal, right?
What about the people who survive?
For every one person who dies:
- 19 more require hospitalization.
- 18 of those will have permanent heart damage for the rest of their lives.
- 10 will have permanent lung damage.
- 3 will have strokes.
- 2 will have neurological damage that leads to chronic weakness and loss of coordination.
- 2 will have neurological damage that leads to loss of cognitive function.
So now all of a sudden, that "but it's only 1% fatal!" becomes:
- 3,282,000 people dead.
- 62,358,000 hospitalized.
- 59,076,000 people with permanent heart damage.
- 32,820,000 people with permanent lung damage.
- 9,846,000 people with strokes.
- 6,564,000 people with muscle weakness.
- 6,564,000 people with loss of cognitive function.
That's the thing the folks who keep going on about "only 1% dead, what's the big deal?" don't get.
The choice is not "ruin the economy to save 1%." If we reopen the economy, it will be destroyed anyway. The US economy cannot survive everyone getting COVID-19.
Re:So worth it (Score:4, Informative)
You can't blame January 6th on lock downs. The single solitary reason for Jan. 6th was the bruised ego of one individual orange snowflake.
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And an asshole cop sat on a guy until he died because they were both locked in their houses.
Wait....
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Are you having a stroke? Should I call someone?
Re: So worth it (Score:2)
Keep on believing that if you excise the one designated scapegoat from the social fabric, all the rage he managed to tap into and all its root causes will also melt away.
This would be an exercise in not learning from history.
Re: So worth it (Score:4, Insightful)
All that rage has been developed over decades by the rightwing media complex. The fundamental fuel for that rage wasn't recent lockdowns; instead it's demographics. White Christians are moving into the minority for the first time in this nation's history, and they're simply not having it.
That doesn't change the fact that one butthurt moron couldn't deal with his own failure. The fact that he used that enraged throng as his tool is irrelevant. He could just as well have attempted his coup by finding a few sympathetic military officers instead of a mob.
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Re: So worth it (Score:4, Insightful)
Same as my evidence that the summer riots were because of lockdowns: idle hands do the devil's work.
Reporting for work every morning has a way of making people less likely to loot and riot the night before. Take away the work, you take away some of the potential barrier between people who are just peeved but occupied and people who perceive little cost to acting out their grievances.
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Same as my evidence that the summer riots were because of lockdowns: idle hands do the devil's work.
Reporting for work every morning has a way of making people less likely to loot and riot the night before. Take away the work, you take away some of the potential barrier between people who are just peeved but occupied and people who perceive little cost to acting out their grievances.
Ah. "Evidence". You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
We'd better preemptively arrest all retired people, too!
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So ... No evidence at all. Why am I not surprised?
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So the January 6th riots were to ... keep the guy as president who was president when the lockdowns happened? Are you SURE that's the logic you want to run with?
Re: So worth it (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, on CNN! So State Media that spews lies. (Score:4, Funny)
We are are all suffering from their gross incompetents [...]
Internet irony strikes again.
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I traveled to Alaska in June 2020. To even set foot outside of the airport I had to take multiple covid tests and maintain documentation of each, and while there wasn't exactly a lockdown in the same sense as in other states, there were some pretty strong restrictions about traveling to communities that were not connected to the highway network. Even those that were, many of them set up road
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If M-TX had tried to argue something along the lines of "look at the death rates in these handful of particular states" then THAT would be the definition of cherry picking, so I have to conclude that you either don't know what the term means WRT data analysis or are
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What are you babbling about? The CDC's data is trivial to access.
Oh, I see. You were just lying.