COVID Lockdowns Were a Giant Experiment. It Was a Failure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly at this point who cares. We did the best we could under a unique and heretofore inexperienced event. This is for scientists to be studying to plan for future pandemics. Getting angry now is ridiculous.

The problem is we weren’t allowed to ask questions and dissenting views were discouraged. Anytime you’re not allowed to ask questions or push back on something you should be concerned. The climate at the time didn’t allow questioning of precautions.

Because it was an EMERGENCY situation.
Having known several people who died or spent months in the hospital with Covid it was not something most of us wanted to just take our chances with.

Questions and dissent are most important during an emergency. No you don’t get to memory hole this.

You have that exactly backward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Apologies if this was already posted, but I came across this article from New York magazine that made me question the efficacy of lockdowns, and our whole response to the pandemic. Very much 20/20 hindsight, but the more I think about it, the angrier I get, especially with closing the schools.

Here’s a link, along with a key paragraph arguing that Sweden probably had the right response.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/covid-lockdowns-big-fail-joe-nocera-bethany-mclean-book-excerpt.html

So in attempting to gauge the value of lockdowns, the most appropriate way is to look not just at COVID deaths but at all deaths during the pandemic years. That’s known as the “excess deaths” — a measure of how many more people died than in a normal year. One authoritative accounting was compiled by The Spectator using data gathered by the OECD. It showed that during the first two years of the pandemic — 2020 and 2021 — the U.S. had 19 percent more deaths than it normally saw in two years’ time. For the U.K., there was a 10 percent rise. And for Sweden — one of the few countries that had refused to lock down its society — it was just 4 percent. An analysis by Bloomberg found broadly similar results. In other words, for all the criticism Sweden shouldered from the world’s public health officials for refusing to institute lockdowns, it wound up seeing a lower overall death rate during the pandemic than most peer nations that shut down schools and public gatherings. It is not unreasonable to conclude from the available data that the lockdowns led to more overall deaths in the U.S. than a policy that resembled Sweden’s would have.

This is a stupid take.

That was enlightening. Let me guess, you’re a COVID cultist who’s angry that your extreme precautions proved to be a waste of time and resources.

Showing who you are.

-np

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So this is about you being in a snit fit over school closings?

Newsflash: Teachers were not going to return to the classroom because they were the exact demographic Covid was killing.

Obese

[Anonymous]

It kept my family safe so I got no issues with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So this is about you being in a snit fit over school closings?

Newsflash: Teachers were not going to return to the classroom because they were the exact demographic Covid was killing.

No they were not the “exact demographic.” And of course somehow teachers in private schools, Florida, the UK and Sweden returned. This heightened risk for teachers somehow only existed in blue state cities.

We all know what happened - the teachers unions imposed on the Biden Admin to keep schools closed and “keep poor kids out of school” became the bizarro campaign of the left.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly at this point who cares. We did the best we could under a unique and heretofore inexperienced event. This is for scientists to be studying to plan for future pandemics. Getting angry now is ridiculous.

The problem is we weren’t allowed to ask questions and dissenting views were discouraged. Anytime you’re not allowed to ask questions or push back on something you should be concerned. The climate at the time didn’t allow questioning of precautions.

Because it was an EMERGENCY situation.
Having known several people who died or spent months in the hospital with Covid it was not something most of us wanted to just take our chances with.

Questions and dissent are most important during an emergency. No you don’t get to memory hole this.

What do you think should happen today? Are you advocating for anything in particular?

I think laws should be passed that require schools to remain open. Public health authories should be sent to school to understand risks and benefits. Strong protection of 1A rights in the pending Supreme Court case. Fixing the learning loss is going to be a long term project but the new understanding of the importance of phonics is a great step. We need to do the same for math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly at this point who cares. We did the best we could under a unique and heretofore inexperienced event. This is for scientists to be studying to plan for future pandemics. Getting angry now is ridiculous.

This 100%. People forget that there was virtually nothing known about this virus, and that we had no tests and no treatments. Oh, also it could spread asymptomatically. Would *you* want to be the one that made the call to send kids back to school only to have a breakout of the virus with a 10% fatality rate?

Calling the lockdowns an "experiment" is misinformed and deliberately incendiary. An experiment would be if we decided to lock down 50% of the schools in a school district and allowed the other 50% to operate as normal. An experiment is something that you do with planning and foresight and signed consent by the participants. An experiment also has predetermined metrics and measures of success and failure that are accepted by the experts in the field.

To say the lockdowns were a failed experiment is pure clickbait meant to anger people, and you fell for it, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly at this point who cares. We did the best we could under a unique and heretofore inexperienced event. This is for scientists to be studying to plan for future pandemics. Getting angry now is ridiculous.

The problem is we weren’t allowed to ask questions and dissenting views were discouraged. Anytime you’re not allowed to ask questions or push back on something you should be concerned. The climate at the time didn’t allow questioning of precautions.

What are you talking about? There were plenty of people who questioned everything and did whatever they wanted anyway. It’s not like the police came and arrested people for expressing dissenting views. Even in early covid when people were dying, plenty of people questioned why they had to be inconvenienced to save other people’s lives and behaved accordingly. Lockdowns were never going to work in this country because we are a narcissistic and selfish society who rarely behave for the greater good of community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly at this point who cares. We did the best we could under a unique and heretofore inexperienced event. This is for scientists to be studying to plan for future pandemics. Getting angry now is ridiculous.

This 100%. People forget that there was virtually nothing known about this virus, and that we had no tests and no treatments. Oh, also it could spread asymptomatically. Would *you* want to be the one that made the call to send kids back to school only to have a breakout of the virus with a 10% fatality rate?

Calling the lockdowns an "experiment" is misinformed and deliberately incendiary. An experiment would be if we decided to lock down 50% of the schools in a school district and allowed the other 50% to operate as normal. An experiment is something that you do with planning and foresight and signed consent by the participants. An experiment also has predetermined metrics and measures of success and failure that are accepted by the experts in the field.

To say the lockdowns were a failed experiment is pure clickbait meant to anger people, and you fell for it, OP.

that was true for like the first month or two. there was no “emergency” justification months in once it became clear that the IFR was quite low for people under 60. certainly none at all after vaccines were developed. remember that almost a whole YEAR after vaccine availability some DC councilmembers were still trying to push through extended covid school closures.

as for your pedantic criticism of the word “experiment,” yawn. the obvious meaning is that lockdowns were an extreme intervention with no basis to know the impact. moreover the approach (close schools & businesses, close borders, restrict public movement, coercive vaccination policies) went COMPLETELY against what had been recommended for pandemics prior to covid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly at this point who cares. We did the best we could under a unique and heretofore inexperienced event. This is for scientists to be studying to plan for future pandemics. Getting angry now is ridiculous.

The problem is we weren’t allowed to ask questions and dissenting views were discouraged. Anytime you’re not allowed to ask questions or push back on something you should be concerned. The climate at the time didn’t allow questioning of precautions.

What are you talking about? There were plenty of people who questioned everything and did whatever they wanted anyway. It’s not like the police came and arrested people for expressing dissenting views. Even in early covid when people were dying, plenty of people questioned why they had to be inconvenienced to save other people’s lives and behaved accordingly. Lockdowns were never going to work in this country because we are a narcissistic and selfish society who rarely behave for the greater good of community.

Lockdowns weren't for the greater good, loon. You still haven't learned anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly at this point who cares. We did the best we could under a unique and heretofore inexperienced event. This is for scientists to be studying to plan for future pandemics. Getting angry now is ridiculous.

The problem is we weren’t allowed to ask questions and dissenting views were discouraged. Anytime you’re not allowed to ask questions or push back on something you should be concerned. The climate at the time didn’t allow questioning of precautions.

What are you talking about? There were plenty of people who questioned everything and did whatever they wanted anyway. It’s not like the police came and arrested people for expressing dissenting views. Even in early covid when people were dying, plenty of people questioned why they had to be inconvenienced to save other people’s lives and behaved accordingly. Lockdowns were never going to work in this country because we are a narcissistic and selfish society who rarely behave for the greater good of community.

Oh so you think we should have been more like China with peoples doors nailed shut?

Dissent was absolutely impossible on a social level and as we know from the social media 1A case pending at the Supreme Court, the government was extremely closely involved in getting viewpoints on covid deleted from social media. Even if that case finds there was no 1A violation, it absolutely shows that the government acted to literally delete opposing views.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The problem with this example is that Sweden is a small, culturally homogenous, fairly wealthy country in a northern climate. Would the same approach have the same outcome in the US? Probably not.

Like questions I'd want answered include:

- Did high conscientiousness among Swedish people result in voluntary social distancing during Covid peaks even without lockdowns?

- Did the climate in Sweden, with just a short summer season, allow Sweden to avoid the worst of the pandemic because people there socialize less outside their families in cold months anyway?

- Did Sweden's strong social safety net play a role?

I do tend to think that hard, very restrictive lockdowns likely have less of an effect on death rates than we think, and also that prolonged lockdowns have real costs that we are still reluctant to acknowledge in many cases.

I agree with all of this.

And I refuse to be angry. I wish we could study the effects of the lockdowns, be objective, and learn some lessons, but that's not where we are as a people. I think we are doing more damage to ourselves by being angry over something we can't change now. It's not productive. If there was any area where we should have admitted failure it was with schools. I would like to have seen something structural done to address learning loss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly at this point who cares. We did the best we could under a unique and heretofore inexperienced event. This is for scientists to be studying to plan for future pandemics. Getting angry now is ridiculous.

The problem is we weren’t allowed to ask questions and dissenting views were discouraged. Anytime you’re not allowed to ask questions or push back on something you should be concerned. The climate at the time didn’t allow questioning of precautions.

What are you talking about? There were plenty of people who questioned everything and did whatever they wanted anyway. It’s not like the police came and arrested people for expressing dissenting views. Even in early covid when people were dying, plenty of people questioned why they had to be inconvenienced to save other people’s lives and behaved accordingly. Lockdowns were never going to work in this country because we are a narcissistic and selfish society who rarely behave for the greater good of community.

Oh so you think we should have been more like China with peoples doors nailed shut?

Dissent was absolutely impossible on a social level and as we know from the social media 1A case pending at the Supreme Court, the government was extremely closely involved in getting viewpoints on covid deleted from social media. Even if that case finds there was no 1A violation, it absolutely shows that the government acted to literally delete opposing views.

Where in my post did I say anything remotely close to nailing people’s doors shut. I said people could have dissenting views here and they did. I also have no idea what the government did on social media. I personally saw plenty of dissent that wasn’t deleted.

[Anonymous]

So you had your hissy fit and voted for Youngkin, OP. You’ll have another chance to vote for Trump next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly at this point who cares. We did the best we could under a unique and heretofore inexperienced event. This is for scientists to be studying to plan for future pandemics. Getting angry now is ridiculous.

The problem is we weren’t allowed to ask questions and dissenting views were discouraged. Anytime you’re not allowed to ask questions or push back on something you should be concerned. The climate at the time didn’t allow questioning of precautions.

What are you talking about? There were plenty of people who questioned everything and did whatever they wanted anyway. It’s not like the police came and arrested people for expressing dissenting views. Even in early covid when people were dying, plenty of people questioned why they had to be inconvenienced to save other people’s lives and behaved accordingly. Lockdowns were never going to work in this country because we are a narcissistic and selfish society who rarely behave for the greater good of community.

Oh so you think we should have been more like China with peoples doors nailed shut?

Dissent was absolutely impossible on a social level and as we know from the social media 1A case pending at the Supreme Court, the government was extremely closely involved in getting viewpoints on covid deleted from social media. Even if that case finds there was no 1A violation, it absolutely shows that the government acted to literally delete opposing views.

In the DC area, sure. But not in many other areas. We drove to Michigan to see family several times in mid and late 2021, after having been vaccinated, and let me tell you when we crossed from Pennsylvania into Ohio, no one was masked except us. No one. Even in PA, the farther west we got, the less masking there was. DC really is a bubble. Hell I still see people masking outside, which is crazy in 2023. And yes, I know maybe like 3 people are doing it for allergies or something, but most aren't. I do wear a mask on metro myself still, but nowhere else. And outside of DC virtually no one even does that.