I'm just not sure what that has to do with it. If they're engaging in specific risky behavior, maybe it's justified to ban that risky behavior, but you can't just tell an entire age bracket they've been naughty and ground them for 2 weeks as punishment.

Don’t worry, precedent shows that it will be extended past two weeks. Remember “15 days to slow the spread”?

and it worked. it slowed the spread.

There is no evidence that the measures slowed the spread as compared to the natural dynamics of an infectious disease as immunity builds. Compare Sweden’s curve to New York’s for example.

> There is no evidence that the measures slowed the spread as compared to the natural dynamics of an infectious disease as immunity builds. Compare Sweden’s curve to New York’s for example.

Compare the US's curve to China's. If the US hadn't tried to half-ass it's measures (at the personal to the national level), we wouldn't still be arguing about them because the virus would be under control and they wouldn't be necessary anymore.

>Compare the US's curve to China's. If the US hadn't tried to half-ass it's measures

Are you advocating welding people in buildings?

Indeed. And do we trust China’s numbers? I thought it was an unspoken fact that no one cites their data in legitimate media, since it is heavily manipulated.

Do you trust Taiwan’s data? They contained and eradicated the disease even more effectively than the Beijing regime, without thousands of deaths and millions of infections.

So clearly there are ways to check the spread and cut out 99% of deaths. (They are also not wizardry or witchcraft. Mandatory masks in public, temp measurement at schools and public buildings, quarantines at entry and positive diagnosis enforced extremely strictly by law enforcement, and tracing the infection chain. That’s literally it.)

But I think we're getting off track from the original discussion here. I strongly suspect Taiwanese disease control experts would identify a quarantine policy applying only to a specific 4 year age bracket as what a commenter upthread described as "half-ass measures"; a serious attempt to control the virus would have to apply to everyone, since everyone can spread it.

> Indeed. And do we trust China’s numbers? I thought it was an unspoken fact that no one cites their data in legitimate media, since it is heavily manipulated.

Not particularly, but even if China undercounted by 10x, it's still way ahead of places like Sweden and the US on a per capita basis.

I have relatives there, and their lives are basically back to normal and have been for months. The bungling Western (especially American) response has unfortunately been a huge propaganda win for the Communist party. They're thanking every American asshole who loudly refuses to things as simple as wearing a mask for making them look good.

> Are you advocating welding people in buildings?

No, that's a straw man. It's like saying that someone who advocates for an effective police force is also advocating for that force to recklessly kill suspects.

What I am advocating for is mandatory pandemic control measures that are strict enough to work and applied consistently until the job is done, and a population that's willing consistently take efforts to protect the common good rather than complain and resist when things aren't maximally convenient to them personally. That applies not just to first-order responses, but to second and third order responses as well.

How will we know when the job is done? Please give specific numbers.

Does violation of fundamental civil rights like freedom of assembly not also harm the common good? We can't focus narrowly on one objective and ignore everything else.

Is Sweden a good comparison though? Just because the government did not impose the measures doesn't mean that the same thing didn't happen

No, it is an exceptionally poor comparison but your failure here is assuming that the person making this comment is acting in good faith. They are not. Downvote, ignore, and move on to discussions with people who are not political tools.

Agree. It's simply not worth engaging with trolls or people who intend to be willfully ignorant. They will just sit there and say "show me the randomized clinical trial for <blah>" even if they aren't qualified to parse the study.

The Corona Cult is going to baselessly discredit your ideas which are valid and accurate because they have no logical response. Please vote in November! Keep the fanatics from committing additional human rights violations!

He is just claiming no evidence and cherry picking data. I can just as easily point to other countries that have limited their Covid cases to single digits. Do we really need a controlled experiment to prove to you that wearing masks limit the spread of an airborne virus? That is common sense.

Is putting a plague vector directly on your face with a virus that stays on surfaces for days common sense?

Is putting a device on your face that requires constantly interacting your hands near your respiratory tract common sense?

Everything that follows a cult's narrative is common sense, everything that disagrees with a cults narrative is immediately discarded.

Be aware of your biases.

You have no scientific evidence that these students not wearing surgical masks or cloth face coverings has anything to do with covid spread. We have decades, nay a century, of science showing that face covering requirements do not slow the spread of a pandemic. There will absolutely be lawsuits over the rash, panicked, capricious, arbitrary actions of authorities during this crisis.