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

[Anonymous]

A similar comparison between Swedes and the US would be a younger, healthier subset of the US population vs. all Swedes, who are far healthier as a whole than Americans

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who is still obsessed and mad over “lockdowns” (which isn’t anything we ever did in this country anyway).

the National Guard wouldn’t let me sit in the park in April 2020.

What park was that, dearie?

I don’t remember any National Guard deployments related to Covid so I am going to call “bullshit” on this one.

Again, I don’t understand the obsession with this. As was previously stated, public health officials did the best they could with the information available at the time. And the goal was to not overwhelm hospitals— to slow the spread, not prevent people from getting sick. They just didn’t want people sick all at once. To that end, social distancing (not “lockdowns” we never had actual lockdowns) were largely effective. Somehow these obsessed people have moved the goalposts and think the objective was preventing people from getting it. That was never the stated objective.

DP, I don't know about April 2020, but our local playground had yellow tape around it put there by the county until the neighbors got fed up and tore it down - in late fall 2021. Long, long after it was known that covid does not spread outdoors except for exceptional circumstances. And it wasn't the only one. Yes, there was extreme and overblown caution in some respects. I remember posts on DCUM about whether it's ok to pass someone walking on a trail outside without a mask. I remember getting screamed at by some little old lady because I was 4 feet away from her on an outdoor trail, unmasked. In winter 2020.

I didn't object to the school closures or the social distancing. I do think, however, that at some point after we had a lot more knowledge - call it September 2020 - decisions were made that were fear-based and not evidence-based. Pretending otherwise now is not honest or helpful.

It was pretty much all fear based. Once you figured this out, it was impossible to ignore. Unfortunately, most people aren’t that bright and they are easily swayed by the media. Why did we have death counters and case counters on the news, but only for Covid? Millions of Americans die from all sorts of things but no one has ever seemed to care.

I wish our country had spend Covid money fighting obesity.

If it were truly all fear-based, I think I'd be more sympathetic to the mistakes that were made.

The problem for me is that for some small minority it was all real fear. But for a lot of people it was a combination of fear, selfishness, and arrogance.

Like I totally understand why many teachers were reluctant to return to the classroom in fall of 2020. Totally reasonable, especially if you were older or had comorbidities.

But there were plenty of younger, healthy teachers who didn't want to return to the classroom, not out of fear, but because they liked working from home. Teaching is a field with high burn out rates and there were a lot of burnt out teachers who were like "yes I am 'scared' to return to the classroom, only when it's safe."

There were also a lot of parents who combined their own health anxiety ("if my kid goes to in person school, we'll all die") with extreme privilege ("I can just hire a nanny and a tutor and host a small pod school in my playroom and look, I've solved this problem for myself and no one else"), and they used Covid fear-mongering to shame anyone who didn't have those privileges into think it was "selfish" to want their kids to go to in-person school.

There were also politicians who wanted to exploit both the real fears of vulnerable people, and the over-zealous fears of privileged people who weren't really very vulnerable, to convince voters that "good" people supported lengthy shutdowns and indefinite mask mandates, and "bad"people don't.

If all of these poor policy choices were just the result of people being scared, I think people wouldn't argue over it so much because fear in the face of a new disease is understandable. But the fact that shutdowns and other unreasonable policies (mandatory masking of toddlers is a good example) went on well into 2021 is a reflection of how it wasn't just fear. It was also opportunism, laziness, selfishness, etc. And that's the stuff that actually makes me mad.

[Anonymous]

Our healthcare system was very close to collapsing. That is why we did what we did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our healthcare system was very close to collapsing. That is why we did what we did.

No it was not close to collapsing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our healthcare system was very close to collapsing. That is why we did what we did.

No it was not close to collapsing.

In certain areas at certain times, it was. I'm glad I didn't live in NYC in 2020. An earlier lockdown could have saved people there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who is still obsessed and mad over “lockdowns” (which isn’t anything we ever did in this country anyway).

the National Guard wouldn’t let me sit in the park in April 2020.

We moved on. We are in 2023. Almost 2024.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our healthcare system was very close to collapsing. That is why we did what we did.

No it was not close to collapsing.

Did you work in the ER during, say, the heights of omicron? Or even December 2020? Because omg. It was not sustainable.

[Anonymous]

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

My elderly parents and in-laws have never had Covid, thanks in part to the lockdowns, and also because of their own caution. If it hadn't been a national public health precaution, they probably wouldn't have been as careful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our healthcare system was very close to collapsing. That is why we did what we did.

No it was not close to collapsing.

In certain areas at certain times, it was. I'm glad I didn't live in NYC in 2020. An earlier lockdown could have saved people there.

Trump sent two navy ships 1000 extra beds and Cuomo told him to send it back. Tell me more how the response wasn’t political or irrational.

[Anonymous]

Our healthcare system was close to collapsing because our healthcare system is a horrible, mismanaged, hodgepodge mess, run by corporations (only interested in their bottom line), insurance companies (ditto), and pharmaceutical companies (ditto ditto).

If we were really serious about addressing the threat of another pandemic, we would invest in a single payer system that would:

1) Increase access to healthcare across the board, improving health outcomes generally and decreasing obesity and other comorbidities that made so many Americans more vulnerable to Covid,

2) Make it easier to address widespread public health issues like the flu, RSV, and, yes, Covid, by creating an actual system that can enact system-wide policies. Which is really useful when it comes to the spread of communicable disease, imagine that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A similar comparison between Swedes and the US would be a younger, healthier subset of the US population vs. all Swedes, who are far healthier as a whole than Americans

Swedes are older than Americans on average and old age is the biggest risk factor for COVID death/severe disease.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our healthcare system was very close to collapsing. That is why we did what we did.

No it was not close to collapsing.

Did you work in the ER during, say, the heights of omicron? Or even December 2020? Because omg. It was not sustainable.

I seem to remember a whole bunch of emergency field hospitals that were never or barely used.

[Anonymous]

I love how there are STILL people on this thread sticking up for lockdowns. They did NOTHING. Worst "experiment" ever. Look where we are now because of lockdowns. Inflation through the roof. Happy?

[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.

We, as a whole, can NEVER forget what happen. We can NEVER allow this to happen ever again.

[Anonymous]

The best comparison would be Sweden vs other Nordic countries. It does not look like Sweden did worse than other Nordic countries given it is the most populous of them.