Santa Clara County in the middle of Silicon Valley aggressively enforced lockdown rules and fined hundreds of businesses. This wrecked many segments of the local economy, and drove people into poverty and hunger.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/28/why-san-mateo-county-...

Those of us fortunate enough to still be employed can help by donating to local food banks like Martha's Kitchen.

https://www.marthas-kitchen.org/donate.html

What wrecked the economies was the length of the pandemic. If we actually locked down for a month or so we might have had a shot at beating it with less long-term misery, but since covid was so politicized and government was too timid to actually do that, we half-assed it instead, and here we are a year later.

Go outside Silicon Valley and a few other metro areas, and you'll still see widespread lack of enforcement. Most of the good behavior has been voluntary. Good people/businesses listening to health guidance. Nobody is getting pulled over in rural America and fined for violating stay-at-home. If I wanted to, I could "unessentially" drive across the state of CA right now, sit down at a fully-open bar or restaurant unmasked, and nobody would lift a finger to stop me.

What exactly do you mean by "actually locked down"? That 100% of the population would be prohibited from leaving their homes? What about food? What about medical emergencies? What about a house burning down or a tree falling on the roof? What if a watermain bursts? There are endless edge cases that keep the virus around so when the lockdown ends, all you've done is delayed host exposure a bit. And this ignores the possibility of animals serving as reservoirs of the virus. It also ignores multi-family housing. What if most of the people on the 3rd floor have COVID the first week and then it spreads to the 4th floor the next week, the 5th floor the next, and so on? Now you have people exiting the lockdown who have just been infected and can spread it all over the place.

The only thing a lockdown can do is slow things down in order to have time to get more prepared. The notion that the virus can be extinguished by lockdowns simply is not workable. It's an idea that is attractive because it's simple but only because it ignores the logistic realities of a planet with nearly eight billion people, or on the national level, 330 million people.

Except, like, where it's worked. Australia, New Zealand, parts of South East Asia.

Just last week Brisbane Australia had a small outbreak of 3-4 people. We locked down the whole city/region for 3 days to allow contact tracing to occur.

We've now relaxed those controls again but are preventing groups of 20+ people from gathering.

You also must wear masks in all venues where possible, including public transport.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-01/covid-updates-brisban...

It fucking works. The fact that other western countries haven't been successful is nothing to do with the method but the implementation.

It also helps we force interstate and international travellers to enter quarantine for 14 days. But when I'm hearing friends families in Texas going to Prague for Christmas, and didn't have to quarantine when they arrived OR when they went home. Is it that much of a surprise the US and Europe is in such a fucking state?

Edit: just to add another reference to larger lock downs. Brisbane or the state of Queensland has previously had lock downs that went for months previously while we sought to prevent community transmission. Now for the last 4 months we've literally gone back to normal besides international holidays. Pubs reopened. Cafes opened. No restrictions. Dancing in night clubs. No masks.

Lock downs. Work.

Sure, when you have a group of people willing to go along with a lock down.

When it was suggested in the U.S., xenophobia quickly accompanied it.

Do the rich lock down? Nope. Look at how the athletes, people in power, and other celebrities do things when no one is watching. Rules for the little people.

Yeah, I get that. Willingness to trust the method gets you the results. We went (Australia) pretty hard on ensuring people were held accountable (e.g huge fines, charges and gaol time for L those breaking lock down).

Edit: on accountability, the rich were also stopped. I can't recall the gentleman but a billionaire on his private yacht back during the biggest part of lock down bounced between states on the east coast last year.

When Queensland Police found out, they went to his yacht and forced him into hotel quarantine for the duration that everyone else is expected to.

There are exceptions. Some other billionaires and wealthy members of society have sought exceptions to quarantine at home. But even then it was with the caveat that they are willing to pay for 24/7 surveillance from security/police to ensure compliance.

You are an island. Our borders are porous. Sure, you can lock down and know that no one is sneaking across your borders. Sab Francisco locks down, and someone drives in from out of town and keeps the spread going.

The island excuse is getting old. Is there any evidence that “national border crossing by land only” was a significant source of spread, compared to community spread and air travel? On the contrary, there are non-islands that also were able to significantly slow the spread using actual lockdowns. And there were islands that did not control the spread due to not implementing lockdowns (UK). It doesn’t seem like Island is a really significant factor.

Hmm. Valid point.

I see that [1] 6.7 M people visited Australia in 2020. And 80 M [2] visited the US in 2019. 18 M [3] came from Mexico in 2019.

Perhaps Australia being an island isn't important. Perhaps it is because so few people visited you and you have such low population density.

[1] https://camperchamp.com.au/statistics/australia/#:~:text=How....

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/214686/number-of-interna....

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/214765/number-of-mexican...

Even with that, we had controls on state lines, country boundaries and county boundaries. Literal army check points on these state lines during the harshest lock downs.

There's a reason why the Melbourne/Victorian outbreak which was the worst we've seen in Australia was kept to that city. Noting that exceptions were managed, we still allowed domestic travel for freight and similar so food and goods were still received and sent albeit with delays.

I'm not suggesting the US, Europe and other countries would been as successful as we have been. It's too difficult to say. But what I am saying, is the US and Europe didn't even fucking try.

One thing Australia does have in its favour, is every single state has its own separate state ran government. And each state held others accountable, there's been a lot of political mud slinging but our states enforced those borders and enforced them well. Where the Federal government did the same for international borders (with less success than state borders, e.g New South Wales and Federal Government made a mess of the Ruby Princess: https://theconversation.com/ruby-princess-inquiry-blames-nsw...).

As I mentioned in my grand fathered comment. An anecdote for sure, but I know of people who literally went to Europe from the US for a holiday over the 2020/2021 Christmas. Little to no controls were used. This is why Covid was and is spreading. There's absolutely no desire for either Europe or the US to stop international travellers and Covid spreading events.

I was galled to find the UK didn't make international travel even difficult until the more/highly infectious UK Covid variant came to be and that was only in the last few months. What the fuck was happening prior to then?

I am sympathetic. Countries like Spain have been economically destroyed by Covid because they're so reliant on tourism.

Australia's regions where tourism is the largest part of the local GDP (Far North Queensland, Cairns as an example) are really struggling and even with the Federal Government printing money like there's no tomorrow. That relief is being wound down and it's now starting to bite. But even here we provided more support to business and local people more than what I've seen from other countries internationally.

It's appalling really. There just seems so little appetite from people on the ground or the countries ruling parties to commit to lock down and providing financial support to their workers so they can afford to not go to work.

But, I abhore the 'what you did wouldn't work here' rhetoric. It's bullshit. No one fucking tried.

If being an island is the secret sauce why did the UK do so poorly?

Anyone pushing a univariate theory of virology, sociology, and economics in the context of a globalized economy of 8 billion people is pushing simpleton pseudoscience

> That 100% of the population would be prohibited from leaving their homes? What about food? What about medical emergencies? What about a house burning down or a tree falling on the roof? What if a watermain bursts?

Other countries actually addressed those questions. The most stringent example is china: They restricted everyone to their immediate neighborhood, then delivered food and other essential goods to each neighborhood in a centrally planned system. Medical emergencies were allowed to leave a neighborhood and drive to the nearest hospital.

Not pleasant, but it worked.

It also helped that they banned reporting on covid deaths and dissapeared activists who were trying to do so on Github. Not pleasant, but it worked.

You don't need 100%. There are parts of the world that have contained the virus (and may have eradicated it) even though essential services operated, even though people were permitted to leave their homes. Of course it can come back into those regions, but managing the spread is much less difficult once numbers are low enough for tracing. It becomes an exercise in public health regulations and targeted shutdowns.

The other question is: what are the alternatives? We didn't even have a vaccine prior to December. Now that we have a vaccine, there are the logistics of immunising everyone willing. Once the willing are immunised, we don't know whether it will be enough to stop the spread and mutation of the virus. On the other hand, ignoring the problem won't protect the economy. High absenteeism due to illness or self-imposed isolation of high risk individuals are the best we can hope for. There are far worse scenarios. Ignoring the problem won't protect the health care system. Even if it could handle the increased numbers without impacting mortality rate due to covid, many procedures could not be undertaken since the risk of infection would impact the outcome of those procedures.

The reality is that we are in a difficult situation. There is no perfect solution, simply solutions that improve outcomes. While vaccination may be a better long term solution, it is not a 100% solution. Also, the simplicity of lockdowns is about more than having time to get more prepared. It is about making the situation manageable. May it be through vaccination or isolation, creating a manageable situation is the key component to eradication.

> If we actually locked down for a month or so we might have had a shot at beating it with less long-term misery, but since covid was so politicized and government was too timid to actually do that, we half-assed it instead, and here we are a year later.

Looking at the situation from the outside, your point can't be emphasised enough. I live in a region that took the initial stay-at-home orders seriously, imposed self-isolation requirements for anyone entering the region, and got numbers low enough that tracking became a realistic tool for containment. Kids go to school, safely and with relative normalcy. Adults work at home when possible and in their workplace when necessary. Most of the restrictions we face are in the form of public health regulations rather than shutdowns. When there are shutdowns, they are targeted and of limited duration. Yes, certain parts of the economy have been hit hard. On the other hand, they would have been hit hard anyway. Accepting the pain at the start of the pandemic has also protected many other parts of the economy.

Two parts of your comment contradict each other... How is it that nobody was enforcing/following the lockdowns (so the economy could presumably function), yet pandemic ruined the economy and not lockdowns (implying lack of demand due to widespread voluntary compliance)?

My experience in WA and NV was that nobody cares. Even in "liberal" Seattle, a couple weeks after WA reopened indoor dining, we went out and couldn't find a spot in a restaurant in the entire neighborhood without a 20+ minute wait. We traveled to NV a few times in the last few months and it was always like that - everything that is allowed to be crowded, is.

Extended family in MA recently reported on the places nearby closing "due to the pandemic". Extended family in TX had a kid's birthday party at a water park. And, tangentially, MA has more cases and deaths per capita than TX...

If there were no lockdowns, the economy would have been mostly fine all along. The unemployment rate divergence across states seems to bear this out.

The economic victims were the businesses that voluntarily closed and their employees, and the ones in the few regions where business closures were enforced. The businesses that horsed around and didn't close were mostly fine, but contributed to a public health disaster.

Hopefully the lesson learned in 2020 is that actual lockdowns work (see the countries that actually did them), but if you're too timid to enforce lockdowns (like the USA), then don't send mixed messages and do it half way. We could have 1. done a lockdown and gotten on with life after a very short period of economic hardship, or 2. ignored it and let a whole bunch of people die. Somehow our government managed to pick a worse option: 3. implement unenforced and unevenly enforced measures, which both craters the economy long term AND lets a whole bunch of people die. Great work, USA.

Per capita cases/deaths in the USA are not worse than many major European countries, so I am not sure why you singled out the USA.

Moreover, I am not sure the strictness of lockdowns really correlated with outcomes - Sweden is a famous example, Belgium vs Netherlands another iirc. The only lockdowns that worked (so far) were either islands (meaning very few points of exchange that are easy to control) or totalitarian (e.g. China).

Or a little bit of both, like cops barging into somebody's home in Australia over a Facebook post. At that point I'll take liberty over safety, thank you.

This doesn’t jive with reality. My brother lives in an Asian country with very few Covid cases. It’s still not “back” to normal. Plenty of unemployed, plenty of businesses going under, plenty of government assistance for the desperate.

> I would start looking at lack of government action rather than the little they actually did.

The simple reality of it is that there was a colossal finance related economic crash, similar to 2008, that was blamed on the lockdown when the lockdown wasn't really to blame. We're still in the "dead cat bounce" phase of that crash.

Hit the nail on the head. The pain of the 2008 crash was just kicked down the road by bailing out banks. We will have to reckon with the consequences of government economic meddling at some point. Shutting down the economy was just a shove towards the cliff.

I think that we are going to really see the crash kick off whenever the eviction moratorium is lifted. There is no way that all landlords are able to service their loans. Anybody that has been patient with savings will be cleaning house snatching up cheap properties and businesses.

The eviction moratorium is overblown. Forbearance on mortgages is an extremely cheap way to keep landlords from feeling the pain, and lenders have little upside and much downside from mass selling among landlords when financing is so cheap nowadays. Anyway NY state is $61b estimated lost rent which is comparable to student loan debt (like $40b), neither of these things matter as much as people think they do.

Why? These people are already in default. The renters who need the moratorium were already “in default,” you just didn’t account for it yet. To the degree that the market has known NYC and LA renters’ rent was “too damn high” for decades now, it’s hard to see how people predictably on the verge of default (ie economic default) now having to live somewhere they can afford (ie accounting default) will cause a crash. If anything REITs prices will rise as information (ie who is really capable of paying rents) flows into the system. The renters who can actually afford to live in NYC and LA are richer, and the people who move out will be richer than many people where they’re moving to.

Another way to look at this is that CDOs were responsible for the 2008 crash. Not people taking mortgages they can’t afford.

Constantly economic crashes are the result of derivatives. My feeling is that we will find out what toxic derivative will crash the economy for real when someone takes a long look at PIPEs for SPAC transactions. Another place I would look for nasty derivatives is untaxed cash of large corporations in offshore accounts, especially of the major tech companies.

>Why? These people are already in default. The renters who need the moratorium were already “in default,” you just didn’t account for it yet.

source?

Yeah sure lol, the federal reserve is willing to float asset prices indefinitely. Neither party wants to be incumbent the one that deals with the fallout of raising interest rates. Anyone who has been patient with savings will get wrecked by inflation.

Only if you're savings is in USD. If you have the foresight to see the impending crisis you would also have the foresight to exit USD well before it happens. Savings isn't just cash.

The way I see it playing out is the government is going to try to print prosperity. Foreign governments stop buying our debt and move on to a new reserve currency without the US. If the US is willing to use force to try to maintain USD reserve status things get really ugly. Domestically this is a world of hurt for middle and low income classes. Any country that is preparing for this eventuality is going to do better. But, all countries are playing the same monetary debasement game. Just a few countries are increasing their purchase of gold and decreasing their purchase of US debt.

Another great reason for bitcoin/ethereum

> We will have to reckon with the consequences of government economic meddling at some point.

Not necessarily, the Fed isn’t obligated to unwind its QE purchases. They may not even be willing to, see ‘taper tantrum’ and Oct-Dec 2018. We won’t see another bear market without another black swan.

House prices may come down when the moratorium is lifted, back to 2020 prices. There won’t be as much selling by landlords as you think, lots of them likely qualified for forbearance which makes non-payment of rent a virtual non-issue. It’ll take a 2.5-3% 10y yield to really push mortgage rates up enough to where it starts to affect house prices, or the Fed needs to stop buying MBSes, or both.

The Fed doesn't need to unwind its purchase to kill the dollar. All that needs to happen is the people lose trust in the dollar. There is nothing special about the dollar. It is worth just as much as any other national currency. Some people have already realized this. When the masses catch on it is already too late.

What percentage of landlords do you think are qualified for forbearance? It certainly isn't all of them. What percentage of landlords need to default before there is a crisis?

I wouldn't be looking at the Fed to change their practices. They believe they are in the right and can fix the economy with what they are doing.

Absolutely. Now add the absence of a welfare system that is meant to alleviate the distress.

The USA is actually in the top 10 welfare states in terms of spending per capita, behind only some northern European countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_we...

Spending pocketed by wealthy middlemen.

Are you saying it's a bloat and graft problem and not a funding problem?

Because if so, I agree.

You mean politicians?

>unenforced business closures,

No, these were enforced by the police and courts in most places (certainly where I live.) Lots of people didn't/don't have work.

It was not enforced at all where I live. We had a mask mandate in our county for less than a week this summer. Businesses chose what measures to take and they were all over the place. Thankfully it's a pretty well-to-do county. Only 2 counties in my state had any kind of regulation and there were no mandated business closures to my knowledge in either.

I don’t live there, but isn’t there a large portion of the student population that is returning to schools after a year? I doubt most parents in that case were setting up play dates, so in effect this has been almost a lockdown for those children.

That seems to be the exact problem - why weren't parents setting up play dates?? It's shocking to me how many families seem to think that their kid has no opportunity to talk to another child until schools open again.

Your emphasis on "unenforced" ignores the fact that there's a huge amount of people trying to do what they're told is the right thing, even without a gun to their head.

Unenforced orders are kind of a worst of all worlds where you get most of the economic harm of a lockdown (because the force of guidance and the potential of enforcement gets enough compliance to slow economic activity significantly), but very little of the public health benefit (because a critical mass of noncompliance keeps disease spreading.

>But this article is about the US, where there have been no lockdowns. Only (mostly) unenforced stay-at-home orders, (mostly) unenforced business closures, and (mostly) unenforced mask mandates. I don't see the link.

Your privileged, pedantic ignorance of the major socioeconomic problems caused by the covid 19 response perfectly illustrates OP's point.

No it doesn't. We have been doing the whole spiel for over a year now, running different experiments in different countries.

Lockdowns are not silver bullets - what drives viral spread is behaviour, not legal measures. In fact, if everybody would stay at home for 14 days, the virus dies (decays exponentially).

What actually happened is that folks made the wearing of a piece of cloth, meant to protect others, a political statement and a 'restriction of personal freedom'.

You're disingenuously ignoring that those pushing for mask wearing destroyed their credibility by earlier claiming masks didn't work. It doesn't matter what the goals of their lies were, they were lies and the costs of loss of credibility is at the heart of all of this. Spin it all you want and try to win political points on your ideological enemies all you want, nothing can change the fact that lies were knowingly told and that's the seed that started the skepticism about masks. No amount of gaslighting and screaming that it didn't happen or that it was for everyone's own good will undo that damage. Denying this only harms the credibility of the cause even more.

What does that have to do with the major socioecomic hardships that were created and exacerbated for millions of poor people around the world which are largely ignored by politicians and many other people as evidenced in this thread?

Members of the WHO covid team have estimated that lockdowns may well end up doubling world poverty.

Until you acknowledge these negative side effects, rather than narrow mindedly defaulting to american partisan politics, your response again further helps illustrate OPs point.