> if every country simply locked down for 3-4 weeks

This is an absurd fantasy that couldn’t have been possible in the real world.

> But no, muh freedom, and but the economy!

Your mocking tone is out of place. I do in fact think freedom and the economy are both important. Don’t you?

I'll try with a different tone.

The intention of keeping freedom and not harming the economy was IMNSHO not matched by that effect and the discrepancy wasn't really surprising.

The authorities where I live decided to keep more open than I considered wise, and not much later closed a lot of sports, for example. The effective choice was freedom now against freedom later, even if the intention was to choose more freedom rather than less.

Yes, my freedom over the course of almost 1.5 years was adversely affected because we couldn't handle a month without it.

And yes, the economy was adversely affected because most small businesses were shuttered for half a year and swaths of them went out of business since we could not bear closing everything down for a sixth of that time period.

Edit: Please explain to me how swallowing real estate, employee, and supply chain expenses for 30 days would have been more difficult or less preferable to the splintered schedule of mandated closings over a far longer time period.

The importance of freedom and the economy are not in dispute. The point is that both would have suffered less in the long term if "draconian" lockdowns had been implemented in the short term. It's game theory, and NZ chose the winning strategy while much of the world chose the losing one.

>This is an absurd fantasy that couldn’t have been possible in the real world.

China and the countries of Oceania did just this and have largely suppressed COVID without MRNA vaccines. China has a massive, porous land border. They've protected themselves from inbound infection by quarantining all visitors on arrival.

> every single country

The pandemic is estimated to have cost the world >$16 trillion already. Now politicians are telling us we will have to live with it forever.

For that price, we literally could have paid every human on earth $2,000 to shelter in place for 4 weeks.

What others did is not fantasy but possibility. If your leaders cannot deliver that, replace them.

It's a little more complicated than that.

When you live on islands thousands of miles away from anywhere with a fairly homogenous population and diversified economy, it's easier both physically and politically to take isolation action against a pandemic.

I think the crux of the matter is that I speak with the benefit of hindsight whereas governments had no such luxury. I think, perhaps, if we truly knew with certainty that the pandemic was a more prolonged situation than one could hope for (despite being warned of such), that a more organized and simultaneous effort to shutter economies and travel for a temporary short-term would have been an easier position to argue politically.

Perhaps. In the United States, the Federal government lacks the power or manpower to make such a decisions, and given that there are 50 states, you’ll always have exceptions.

Valid point. That's a whole extra tier of cooperation necessary. I suppose in this case it would not be unfair to treat each state similarly to a country on the global level, but it does complicate the path to the success condition.

The very fact you’re suggesting every country locks down for 3-4 weeks” as a solution shows youre ignoring reality.

All it would take is for 1 person to travel for the epidemic to continue. Maybe developed nations could do it but developing nations are still dealing with illegal border crossers even 1 year into the epidemic.

So great theory but it falls flat in reality.

In my scenario travel in both directions would be disallowed for the time period. This also requires neighboring nations to do the same, as well as farther off countries to implement checks at the airport. All this was somewhat done regardless but in a haphazard manner devoid of full international cooperation.

So we suffered the major drawbacks anyway all while reaping a partial reward.

Just because something is disallowed doesn't mean people stop doing it.

The insinuation is that in such a scenario there would be a strong enough disincentive.

And perhaps also the incentive of not having a years long pandemic.

Yeah the farmer in SE Asia whose family is starving because he can’t get to market will certainly not try and break any rules.

Love these solution designed by people who work from home.

Food distribution certainly falls under essential services. Pharmacies, too. But not much else is absolutely necessary.

What is a strong enough disincentive? Would you recommend building physical walls along our borders and using violence against people who attempt to cross without authorization?

No, I wouldn't. Gosh, and if I didn't respond it would almost look like I did support that wouldn't it? Toss out these cheap tactics...

There are obviously many levels on the spectrum of what could be done to sufficiently increase compliance without falling back on martial law and giving the governments more reason to erode our freedoms.

And if we banned all drugs, all drug use would stop too?

That's a strawman for an entirely separate discussion.

But I'll bite. No, it wouldn't. However that's not only why we shouldn't. It is most effectively and altruistically addressed as a medical and humanitarian issue.