Lockdowns seemed to work in my country early in the pandemic. But in my country many covid measures are reliant on goodwill and voluntary compliance, so if morale drops (as you'd expect with extended lockdown), you expect lockdown effectiveness to drop as well.
It’s clear to me that keeping us out of offices and trains stopped the spread. Unfortunately it had been in the city for 2+ months prior and then ravaged the elderly & medical&front line workers who were out there dealing with it while we got to WFH.
Close, especially indoor contact, without masks, in cooler dry weather appears to be the recipe for disaster here.. ‘ We are seeing it play out in Wave 2 (or 3?) here as people have all gotten very sloppy, even if they are WFH.
From March-October in my social/family circle I knew 0 people with COVID. We were all at home, and people got scared straight pretty quick. Come summer things opened and cases dropped..
From early November to Christmas I knew 30+ people with COVID. Where did they get it? Kids came home from college with it. They went to bars indoors for hours. They dined indoors at restaurants.
B.1.1.7 variant. Coming (already in) the US.
And parts of europe had more of a lockdown than the US and the population fatality rate is worse. I wonder if covid just doesn't care about lockdowns; the countries that haven't gotten hit badly are 1) an island. 2) an isolated continent. 3) an island 4) a country that sits on a peninsula that has a hugely militarized impermeable border. and 5) a group of islands. Even within the US, the state that has the lowest per capita covid rate... Is an island. Even at the micro level, the city in the bay area that is one of the least affected... Is an island.
On the other hand the UK has a higher CFR and a higher per population mortality than the US, so...