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

[Anonymous]

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You must not be dealing with the aftermath in your family. Also, what about learning from our mistakes? Not so easy to move on when people like you are in DENIAL.

I know four separate families where someone died from Covid. Two of them were parents of young children.

Sit down with your “dealing with the aftermath” bullshit.

I really don’t care that your child has a learning gap or whatever you are on about. They will get over it.

Maybe see a professional for help with your heinously insensitive obsession with this.

And I know 2 separate families with young children, where parents committed suicide due to lockdowns and losing their business. So you can take all the seats.

Sucks to be them. I am sorry they were mentally weak. But that isn’t the fault of lockdowns since … *checks notes* there never were any lockdowns ever anywhere in the USA.

When you own a bar and people weren't allowed to be in your bar, checks notes, the business will likely go under. Let's talk about your comorbities that made you so fearful of Covid, shall we? You are obviously not a healthy low risk person.

If you reduce COVID to only fat and elderly and unhealthy people get it so the rest of should not have been inconvenienced, you will not have a lot of people on your side here.

Why should I be on the side of people crying that those struggling with depression were mentally weak? I don't want to be on that person's side. That is a garbage person.

I am confused...so you agree with what I said?

[Anonymous]

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You must not be dealing with the aftermath in your family. Also, what about learning from our mistakes? Not so easy to move on when people like you are in DENIAL.

I know four separate families where someone died from Covid. Two of them were parents of young children.

Sit down with your “dealing with the aftermath” bullshit.

I really don’t care that your child has a learning gap or whatever you are on about. They will get over it.

Maybe see a professional for help with your heinously insensitive obsession with this.

And I know 2 separate families with young children, where parents committed suicide due to lockdowns and losing their business. So you can take all the seats.

Sucks to be them. I am sorry they were mentally weak. But that isn’t the fault of lockdowns since … *checks notes* there never were any lockdowns ever anywhere in the USA.

When you own a bar and people weren't allowed to be in your bar, checks notes, the business will likely go under. Let's talk about your comorbities that made you so fearful of Covid, shall we? You are obviously not a healthy low risk person.

If you reduce COVID to only fat and elderly and unhealthy people get it so the rest of should not have been inconvenienced, you will not have a lot of people on your side here.

Why should I be on the side of people crying that those struggling with depression were mentally weak? I don't want to be on that person's side. That is a garbage person.

I am confused...so you agree with what I said?

I'm not on the side of the PP who likely has comorbidities on top of being an a-hole. That person is a waste of space. Everyone else, as long as they are not a-holes is good.

[Anonymous]

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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.

There was NON STOP questioning of the precautions. It's just that at the time, when the wrong answer had a possible outcome of death, a large number of people were not in support of increasing risk.

I now believe--based on information we now have--that we could have reduced restrictions sooner. I also think it was understandable and appropriate that we didn't do thatat the time--based on limited information. Both of those thing can be true.

I hope we get really, REALLY good long-term studies from this pandemic, and I hope we can take lessons that will help in the next pandemic. But like PP, I see no value in being "angry" about Covid response. I wish people would let go of their anger, or desire to "win" the Covid Debate, so we can all move forward together with lessons learned.

You think it was understandable and appropriate that children could not return to school buildings on a full-time basis until the fall of 2021? Just trying to understand your position.

My DD was in HS in FCPS. Plain ordinary, non-SPED, no special priority. She was in a classroom FT, 4 days a week in March 2021. Now, that was our choice. She could have opted to finish the year virtually. We played the parent card and sent her back. But FCPS kids had that option. And FCPS was very late to return kids vs schools nationally.

In other places, it was 2 days max beginning as late as April 2021. There was nothing more than before March/April and nothing full time until the fall of 2021. There should be at least some discussion as to whether that was necessary and appropriate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

There was NON STOP questioning of the precautions. It's just that at the time, when the wrong answer had a possible outcome of death, a large number of people were not in support of increasing risk.

I now believe--based on information we now have--that we could have reduced restrictions sooner. I also think it was understandable and appropriate that we didn't do thatat the time--based on limited information. Both of those thing can be true.

I hope we get really, REALLY good long-term studies from this pandemic, and I hope we can take lessons that will help in the next pandemic. But like PP, I see no value in being "angry" about Covid response. I wish people would let go of their anger, or desire to "win" the Covid Debate, so we can all move forward together with lessons learned.

You think it was understandable and appropriate that children could not return to school buildings on a full-time basis until the fall of 2021? Just trying to understand your position.

My DD was in HS in FCPS. Plain ordinary, non-SPED, no special priority. She was in a classroom FT, 4 days a week in March 2021. Now, that was our choice. She could have opted to finish the year virtually. We played the parent card and sent her back. But FCPS kids had that option. And FCPS was very late to return kids vs schools nationally.

In other places, it was 2 days max beginning as late as April 2021. There was nothing more than before March/April and nothing full time until the fall of 2021. There should be at least some discussion as to whether that was necessary and appropriate.

What will be the consequences of this discussion?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In retrospect, it was appropriate to close schools in March, 2020. Covid was new. People were dying in Wuhan. The hospital system in Italy became totally overwhelmed. Then New York City. And so on and so forth. It was a new virus. No one knew anything. People were dying. The health care system didn't have the capacity or the knowledge to deal with this. Shutting things down at that moment in time was the right call.

Six months later when we knew a lot more - and particularly after we had effective vaccines - it was a disaster to close schools for another year. The learning loss was enormous. And so too was the basic socialization of children. Formative brains do not do well in isolation. Kids need school for lots of reasons. Anyone who has spent any time in public schools lately can attest that this is often a pretty damaged group of kids.

It was a mistake to keep schools closed. Blame the teachers union. Blame the political polarization at that time. If you recall, keeping schools closed made you a good liberal. Wanting them open made you a heartless MAGA. It was an ugly time and we made a mistake shutting things down for kids.

+1. Over a million Americans have died of COVID. A million. It was a real pandemic. And maybe you weren’t scared in March 2020. But, I had a kid in a very overcrowded public HS and I was. I remember my daughter sewing over 200 cloth masks during initial school closures for our neighbors on a “no charge, but donate what you can to a food bank” basis. At least half were child sized, because there was no PPE. We didn’t know how it was spread, we didn’t know the long term health consequences (and we still don’t) and that surface transmission was not a big problem. We didn’t know how much safer we were outdoors. We didn’t know how to effectively treat COVID. And, if you weren’t POTUS or a VIP, you weren’t getting the very fancy experimental drugs. There were asymptomatic carriers. And we couldn’t test. Yes, it was bad in spring 2020.

I sent my oldest to a SLAC for his freshman year for in person classes and science labs in fall 2020. That was a very hard decision— not to gap year. And I was terrified. Insult away, but I locked my self in the bathroom and just sobbed several times. He signed a healthcare POA and living will before leaving. We didn’t know what would happen on college campuses until those first couple of months were past. But, he was ready to leave home and a year in the basement would have also harmed him, just in a different way. Best of 2 bad choices. It ended up being fine. But, it could have gone badly. It’s easy to forget what we didn’t have in those first months— information, enough healthcare providers, PPE, tests, vaccines.

Yes. K-12 schools were way too slow to reopen in this area. And yes, I was furious for my HS aged kid that fall and winter. And yes, we were lucky that I had time and resources and some creative thinking to throw at helping her cope. As we got new information, we didn’t react fast enough. And we let teachers act like essential workers when it was time for things like vaccine priority. But then say they weren’t really essential when it came time to return to school. Teachers are essential. We need to respect them, pay them and treat them as such. And also expect them to behave like other essential workers.

And it was kids that paid a large part of the price. But, that said, you can’t act like 2023 (or even 2021), with vaccines and tests and good masks if needed, and a more mild variant and mostly information and March 2020 are the same set of circumstances. And you can’t act like disease numbers in a Nordic country where people are homogenous and socialize a lot more outdoors and are in overall better health directly translate to the US.

Plus it’s easy to say, let grandma die to reopen schools. Until it’s your parent who dies.

[Anonymous]

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You must not be dealing with the aftermath in your family. Also, what about learning from our mistakes? Not so easy to move on when people like you are in DENIAL.

I know four separate families where someone died from Covid. Two of them were parents of young children.

Sit down with your “dealing with the aftermath” bullshit.

I really don’t care that your child has a learning gap or whatever you are on about. They will get over it.

Maybe see a professional for help with your heinously insensitive obsession with this.

And I know 2 separate families with young children, where parents committed suicide due to lockdowns and losing their business. So you can take all the seats.

So more than a million COVID deaths. For these we have data. Are you saying there were an equal number of suicides because of lockdowns? I'd like to see the link to the data that you are basing that on. Can't imagine that if there were a million extra suicide deaths in the US during the lockdowns that there wouldn't be an article about it. So please give the link.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

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.

I had mild covid, a sore throat, and it was deleted every single time if I mentioned it as my own experience. This was not allowed to be discussed at all, here.

Yep. And JFC we still have a COVID sticky message on this health forum about "Anti-Vax posts will not be tolerated." Same thing on the travel forum. Can we please get rid of it????

No, because vaccines - including the Covid vaccine - save millions of lives.

Example - babies born to pregnant women who receive the Covid vaccine during pregnancy are much less likely to develop a severe case of Covid and be hospitalized during the first months of life.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7239a3.htm?s_cid=mm7239a3_w

This study is not robust. 1) Sample sizes were extremely small. 75% of the mothers in this study were unvaccinated; there were only 82 babies with covid who had vaccinated mothers. Unmentioned is the fact that a higher share of covid babies with vaxxed mothers were admitted to the ICU than covid babies with unvaxxed mothers. The study's argument rests on only a 50 baby subset of ICU patients who required life support. 2) It is unclear how many of the serious outcomes in covid babies were due to RSV co-infection. 16% of babies with covid were known to have an RSV co-infection but another 31% were missing RSV documentation. Two thirds of the study's covid cases occurred between July 2022 and January 2023, which was also the period when RSV cases exploded: https://www.cdc.gov/surveillance/nrevss/rsv/natl-trend.html RSV poses the greater risk to babies and is unaffected by covid vaccines.

[Anonymous]

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You must not be dealing with the aftermath in your family. Also, what about learning from our mistakes? Not so easy to move on when people like you are in DENIAL.

I know four separate families where someone died from Covid. Two of them were parents of young children.

Sit down with your “dealing with the aftermath” bullshit.

I really don’t care that your child has a learning gap or whatever you are on about. They will get over it.

Maybe see a professional for help with your heinously insensitive obsession with this.

And I know 2 separate families with young children, where parents committed suicide due to lockdowns and losing their business. So you can take all the seats.

So more than a million COVID deaths. For these we have data. Are you saying there were an equal number of suicides because of lockdowns? I'd like to see the link to the data that you are basing that on. Can't imagine that if there were a million extra suicide deaths in the US during the lockdowns that there wouldn't be an article about it. So please give the link.

I'm saying my 2 cancel out PPs two. But let's see the data and all the costs and see if it was worth it. Where's that data? Was it all worth it? How many people missed cancer screenings or other routine health care? Put off that surgery? Suicides? Learning loss? How many of those million deaths were really from Covid and not something else? We'll never have a true accounting either way and some people don't even want us to ask the questions. Because they know they might not like the answers.

[Anonymous]

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You must not be dealing with the aftermath in your family. Also, what about learning from our mistakes? Not so easy to move on when people like you are in DENIAL.

I know four separate families where someone died from Covid. Two of them were parents of young children.

Sit down with your “dealing with the aftermath” bullshit.

I really don’t care that your child has a learning gap or whatever you are on about. They will get over it.

Maybe see a professional for help with your heinously insensitive obsession with this.

And I know 2 separate families with young children, where parents committed suicide due to lockdowns and losing their business. So you can take all the seats.

So more than a million COVID deaths. For these we have data. Are you saying there were an equal number of suicides because of lockdowns? I'd like to see the link to the data that you are basing that on. Can't imagine that if there were a million extra suicide deaths in the US during the lockdowns that there wouldn't be an article about it. So please give the link.

I'm saying my 2 cancel out PPs two. But let's see the data and all the costs and see if it was worth it. Where's that data? Was it all worth it? How many people missed cancer screenings or other routine health care? Put off that surgery? Suicides? Learning loss? How many of those million deaths were really from Covid and not something else? We'll never have a true accounting either way and some people don't even want us to ask the questions. Because they know they might not like the answers.

This is the crux of the matter and why people are still so rabidly defending Covid policies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In retrospect, it was appropriate to close schools in March, 2020. Covid was new. People were dying in Wuhan. The hospital system in Italy became totally overwhelmed. Then New York City. And so on and so forth. It was a new virus. No one knew anything. People were dying. The health care system didn't have the capacity or the knowledge to deal with this. Shutting things down at that moment in time was the right call.

Six months later when we knew a lot more - and particularly after we had effective vaccines - it was a disaster to close schools for another year. The learning loss was enormous. And so too was the basic socialization of children. Formative brains do not do well in isolation. Kids need school for lots of reasons. Anyone who has spent any time in public schools lately can attest that this is often a pretty damaged group of kids.

It was a mistake to keep schools closed. Blame the teachers union. Blame the political polarization at that time. If you recall, keeping schools closed made you a good liberal. Wanting them open made you a heartless MAGA. It was an ugly time and we made a mistake shutting things down for kids.

+1. Over a million Americans have died of COVID. A million. It was a real pandemic. And maybe you weren’t scared in March 2020. But, I had a kid in a very overcrowded public HS and I was. I remember my daughter sewing over 200 cloth masks during initial school closures for our neighbors on a “no charge, but donate what you can to a food bank” basis. At least half were child sized, because there was no PPE. We didn’t know how it was spread, we didn’t know the long term health consequences (and we still don’t) and that surface transmission was not a big problem. We didn’t know how much safer we were outdoors. We didn’t know how to effectively treat COVID. And, if you weren’t POTUS or a VIP, you weren’t getting the very fancy experimental drugs. There were asymptomatic carriers. And we couldn’t test. Yes, it was bad in spring 2020.

I sent my oldest to a SLAC for his freshman year for in person classes and science labs in fall 2020. That was a very hard decision— not to gap year. And I was terrified. Insult away, but I locked my self in the bathroom and just sobbed several times. He signed a healthcare POA and living will before leaving. We didn’t know what would happen on college campuses until those first couple of months were past. But, he was ready to leave home and a year in the basement would have also harmed him, just in a different way. Best of 2 bad choices. It ended up being fine. But, it could have gone badly. It’s easy to forget what we didn’t have in those first months— information, enough healthcare providers, PPE, tests, vaccines.

Yes. K-12 schools were way too slow to reopen in this area. And yes, I was furious for my HS aged kid that fall and winter. And yes, we were lucky that I had time and resources and some creative thinking to throw at helping her cope. As we got new information, we didn’t react fast enough. And we let teachers act like essential workers when it was time for things like vaccine priority. But then say they weren’t really essential when it came time to return to school. Teachers are essential. We need to respect them, pay them and treat them as such. And also expect them to behave like other essential workers.

And it was kids that paid a large part of the price. But, that said, you can’t act like 2023 (or even 2021), with vaccines and tests and good masks if needed, and a more mild variant and mostly information and March 2020 are the same set of circumstances. And you can’t act like disease numbers in a Nordic country where people are homogenous and socialize a lot more outdoors and are in overall better health directly translate to the US.

Plus it’s easy to say, let grandma die to reopen schools. Until it’s your parent who dies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

COVID cultists? OK if you do not believe that COVID in its earliest days was a killer disease, then there is no point in talking to you. You will never believe any precaution or vaccination is a needed reality. And those who believe it was a killer disease think you are delusional. You will never convince the latter that covid precautions were a waste so why are you even bothering? Honest question.

But was it really? That’s what I’m not so sure about. You could *maybe* argue it’s a killer disease for anyone over 75. But certainly not normal, healthy adults.

1.1 Million dead in the US alone. How many millions have to die before a disease is a “killer”?

You do know that saying COVID was a killer in spring 2020 and it no longer a killer in 2023 because we have vaccines and some level of immunity and Paxlovid and knowledge of how to treat are not mutually exclusive, right?

It was a killer. If you mitigate as necessary based on your age and health status and seek treatment when necessary, it is not a killer now.

IMO, the switch happened after the winter 2020-2021 wave, which is when we got vaccines. But, you can argue in either direction for a few months. You cannot argue with any degree of intellectual honesty that it was never a killer.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I recalled correctly, COVID affected the immigrant population more severely due to greater incidence of shared living, multi-generational homes, and overall lower-quality of health.

And poor working conditions/ low status, low paid jobs, not cushy telework gigs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

COVID cultists? OK if you do not believe that COVID in its earliest days was a killer disease, then there is no point in talking to you. You will never believe any precaution or vaccination is a needed reality. And those who believe it was a killer disease think you are delusional. You will never convince the latter that covid precautions were a waste so why are you even bothering? Honest question.

But was it really? That’s what I’m not so sure about. You could *maybe* argue it’s a killer disease for anyone over 75. But certainly not normal, healthy adults.

1.1 Million dead in the US alone. How many millions have to die before a disease is a “killer”?

You do know that saying COVID was a killer in spring 2020 and it no longer a killer in 2023 because we have vaccines and some level of immunity and Paxlovid and knowledge of how to treat are not mutually exclusive, right?

It was a killer. If you mitigate as necessary based on your age and health status and seek treatment when necessary, it is not a killer now.

IMO, the switch happened after the winter 2020-2021 wave, which is when we got vaccines. But, you can argue in either direction for a few months. You cannot argue with any degree of intellectual honesty that it was never a killer.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

The difference now is that it's mutated and less deadly. Anyone who it was going to kill off mostly did but people are still dying from it. We never had true lockdowns but they shut down businesses and schools because the hospitals were overwhelmed, there were not enough ventilators, etc. Its shocking how many people only care about themselves and not the impact on others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

COVID cultists? OK if you do not believe that COVID in its earliest days was a killer disease, then there is no point in talking to you. You will never believe any precaution or vaccination is a needed reality. And those who believe it was a killer disease think you are delusional. You will never convince the latter that covid precautions were a waste so why are you even bothering? Honest question.

But was it really? That’s what I’m not so sure about. You could *maybe* argue it’s a killer disease for anyone over 75. But certainly not normal, healthy adults.

1.1 Million dead in the US alone. How many millions have to die before a disease is a “killer”?

You do know that saying COVID was a killer in spring 2020 and it no longer a killer in 2023 because we have vaccines and some level of immunity and Paxlovid and knowledge of how to treat are not mutually exclusive, right?

It was a killer. If you mitigate as necessary based on your age and health status and seek treatment when necessary, it is not a killer now.

IMO, the switch happened after the winter 2020-2021 wave, which is when we got vaccines. But, you can argue in either direction for a few months. You cannot argue with any degree of intellectual honesty that it was never a killer.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

The difference now is that it's mutated and less deadly. Anyone who it was going to kill off mostly did but people are still dying from it. We never had true lockdowns but they shut down businesses and schools because the hospitals were overwhelmed, there were not enough ventilators, etc. Its shocking how many people only care about themselves and not the impact on others.

Which selfish people are we talking about? Those who thought they were locking down hard but expected other people to deliver them food and supplies while they stayed home watching Netflix?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

This I doubt, because my friend lived in Sweden from late fall 2020 until spring 2023, and she said social distancing and masking were barely observed in her major city. That said she did not contract COVID until 2022, after she'd been vaccinated. She got the vaccine in the US though on a trip home - could not get it in Sweden.

She observed that the Swedes were largely in much better shape/health than the US (not overweight), worked a lot less and were less stressed, and had much better access to health care, i.e. accessible and solid health care for all. Knowing what we know of COVID, I would imagine that major factors are that people were not overweight and didn't have cobmorbidities, and had more immediate access to health care than many folks in the US.

I think this is the main reason they did better overall. Yes, there were some deaths among young and apparently healthy people, but Covid overwhelmingly took the elderly and those with serious comorbidities.

Yes they are healthier, eat a lot of fish, and practice social distancing almost by default: https://www.flashpack.com/us/solo/relationships/sweden-solo-living-single/#:~:text=If%20you%20relish%20being%20single,child%2Dfree%2C%20single%20adult.

They largely live alone, and the population density of Sweden is 2/3 less than that of the USA, already a very disperse country.

Coupled with adequate health care (so people go to the doctor and hospital when it will actually help, not on deaths door).