I don’t think we should have shut down the country like we did and still believe that COVID is real and affects those who are at risk. But the shutting down did more damage than the virus itself

Hmm, the number found online is that Covid killed 1.2 million in the US, so guessing the shutdown and vaccines probably saved millions. But your take is different. Guessing you disagree with the the 1.2m deaths figure? (not trying to be pushy, just curious on your take)

The 1.2m number is what’s reported, but whether shutdowns and mandates prevented multiples of that is something we can’t actually prove. What we do know is that shutting the country down caused deep economic, educational, and mental-health damage that will take decades to unwind.

We had no idea what we were dealing with. It was unprecedented. People were doing the best they could. All the anger didn't help.

I’m not sure it’s right to say we didn’t know what to do. Beaches and playgrounds were closed even though the risk of outdoor spread on surfaces was minimal. Those kinds of choices made the shutdown damage worse without clear public health benefit. We had the science to tell us that viruses don’t survive on beach surfaces for example

It was frustrating to have some of the outdoor ban stuff at a point when it was pretty clear that things were safe in highly ventilated environments. But in my opinion, that was relatively harmless compared to the backlash against common sense precautions, like properly fit N95 masks when sharing enclosed space.

There's a lot of criticism of places that kept schools closed for longer than was necessary, in retrospect. But we really didn't know whether it would always be the case that the risks to children were low. The virus could have mutated in a way that brought more risk. Or there could have been chronic effects that could only be seen after the passage of time. Given the infectiousness of the virus, it could have been so much worse.

I get the vaccine hesitancy. But I think a lot of people were not willing to accept that vaccination is not just about their own safety, but a collective safety issue.

> We had no idea what we were dealing with. It was unprecedented. People were doing the best they could.

So public policy should have reflected that, instead of going into counterproductive authoritarian clampdown mode. In my country the authorities literally switched overnight from threatening to jail parents who took their kids out of school to announcing mandatory school closures.

You can vaguely understand it by looking at hospitals overwhelmed by mass casualty events and then imagine it happening over the course of a year.

Would you, personally, be willing to die to save the economy? Or is your expectation that others would die to save the economy for you? The opposite end of completely unrestrained COVID spread could've been the Spanish Flu, which decimated and destroyed entire areas.

It’s not about letting people die. The issue is that broad shutdowns caused massive long-term harm, and targeted protection would have been a better balance.

I don't disagree with you, but the Spanish Flu killed 50 million. That's twice as much as died in WWI. Seems like it was, overall, a reasonable trade off, to save possibly tens of millions, the world went into a protective state.

And the next time this happens (which it probably will given the statistics), the US will probably handle it much better and the lock down will be less severe. I'm Korean American, and something like 10 years before covid, Korea had gone through an earlier pandemic (swine flu?), so when covid hit, it wasn't that big a deal. They already all knew what to do and the lock down wasn't as severe.

Yeah, our lockdown was overkill in many instances, but it was all so new to us. There's a good chance it'll be a lot better managed the next time.

Some would argue that the deaths by covid are the same as every year deaths by other pulmonary infectious diseases. I've read a ton of books and analysis done by statisticians. So I doubt we should have went crazy like we did.

Interesting. Just looked into it and it seems like there are some researchers who estimate the lockdowns saved a lot of lives, but the economic toll and subsequent deaths from this toll may not have been worth it (as you mentioned). But they also said that now, "we have more tools to battle the virus. Vaccines and therapeutics are available, as are other mitigation measures." Implying we wouldn't have to do lockdowns in future pandemics.

https://record.umich.edu/articles/lockdowns-saved-lives-but-...

So yeah, I do see your point in the lockdowns were probably unnecessary, but as others have mentioned, pandemics were new to the US at the time, and we didn't have the knowledge and procedures on how to best deal with it. Yeah, we did probably go overboard, but what happened is understandable given how deadly Covid was.

We know now that social distancing and masks (for those that are willing) would probably have been enough, as other countries used to pandemics already know, like South Korea.

I don’t believe that at all. COVID was real and serious, especially for vulnerable people. My point is that shutting down the entire country caused damage in areas like education, mental health, and livelihoods that also cost lives and well-being. Protecting those at risk could have been done without blanket shutdowns that hurt everyone.

There are countries that did not shut down (Sweden comes to mind). Do you have some quantitative comparison of the reduced damage done there?

Overall, Sweden didn't fare worse than other European countries with harder measures. But these things are really difficult to compare due to geographic and cultural issues. Sweden is quite rural. Swedes value personal distance, and from my limited experience they easily more readily conform to rules and social norms, so I would assume there was less close contact, and better adherence to the few rules given out.

The US btw. also is largely rural/sub-urban, which should significantly reduce the risk of infection. I think almost all of my colds and flues I got on the metro or the overcrowded super-market.

Yes, there was one study showing that Sweden fared better than the US. However the US as a whole, some of the States, are the sizes of countries. So you get a patchwork comparison. We would have to find a state with similar demographics, culture, economy, etc to compare.

[1] https://www.cato.org/blog/sweden-during-pandemic-pariah-or-p...

You too will be old and weak one day.

My in laws are old and weak. They just played it safe. But didn’t stay isolated from their grandkids unless they were sick

My mother in law has two forms of cancer. FIL before he died post COVID had all sorts of complications. He didn’t stop living his life.

Anecdotal, Dunning Kruger. Just look at the fucking statistics. Old and weak people died, because we didn't lock down enough, for the sake of the fucking economy.

Unbelievable.

Have a blessed day

If you don't want there to be sides during a pandemic, you have to engineer the pathogen such that it causes every infected person to melt in a puddle of grease with near 100% probability in about a week, with near 100% probability of transmission via any casual contact with infected persons at any stage of their infection. You just watch everyone scramble to the same side!

And look. The government doesn’t have to do anything!

> If you don't want there to be sides during a pandemic, you have to engineer the pathogen such that it [...]

Interesting phrase. "Engineer the pathogen".

> If you don't want there to be sides during a pandemic, (...)

Why do you believe a pandemic has sides?

I believe it was recently observed.

It was mainly observed in parts of the USA

1. Yes, parts of the USA inhabited by people.

2. Divided attitudes with regard to the locus of issues around Covid-19, and public policies, are far from exclusive to the USA.

> It's bizarre that there should be "sides" for how to deal with a public health issue.

It's a political issue no matter how you look at it, and it was a very political issue at that, considering what the state (throughout the Western world and elsewhere too) proposed doing.

To paint it as merely a "public health issue" is doing people who don't agree a tremendous disservice, and it is very much part of the othering that has led us here. Please stop it.

Calling something a public health issue doesn’t take anything away from people who don’t agree (with what, exactly?)

> with what, exactly?

The measures.

Clearly, illnesses and diseases are public health issues as are systems to manage food safety. People who don't agree with trying to find the best way to manage public health are obviously sociopathic, though that doesn't mean that everyone has to agree on particular approaches e.g. masks may or may not be effective (though they seem to have now been shown effective in masking ICE agents which is ironic).

Certain methods of dealing with public health issues have historically been shown to be incredibly effective (e.g. vaccination, milk pasteurisation etc), so it's disconcerning when there's a political movement that pushes an agenda that is clearly based on fear and not rational evaluation of the issues. It seems to me that there's a push to make the poorest sections of society become less healthy and more vulnerable.

> People who don't agree with trying to find the best way to manage public health are obviously sociopathic

That's rich. People who want raw milk are sociopaths? Etc? Once again we have name-calling as a way to shut down debate. Might as well call for violence against people who don't agree with you, and I bet you have done just that. These false equivalences and exaggerations are in fact incitements to violence. You and all who do this should be ashamed of yourselves.

I didn't intend it as name-calling, but as a more literal statement. Not caring about other people's health is a trait often exhibited in sociopathy.

I can understand people wanting raw milk and that's fair enough as it goes, but selling it or providing it to others is risking their health to some degree - this is shown by the relatively high level of people falling seriously ill from drinking raw milk - this is due to the high level of bacteria that is often found in it. If someone does care about the health of others, but believes that raw milk is safe to consume, then it's more a case of ignorance than sociopathy.

> Might as well call for violence against people who don't agree with you

You're out of order with that comment.

It was simple. People without ethical limits seen their opening to weaponize fear and discomfort ... and succeeded.

Your sentence can also be applied to both ‘sides’

I don't think that applies if one of the sides is using rational arguments and statistics. However, during the initial COVID outbreak, there was a lack of knowledge and statistics about it, so there was some element of guesswork involved (e.g. face masks may be effective as they help with some other infectious diseases, so let's try wearing them to see if that helps).

There is a difference between 'lets try something out' and we will use the force of law to compel you to do something. A lot of people seem worried about over use of law enforcement but really its not a general problem with law enforcement but rather a problem with what laws are being enforced. They are happy to have law enforcement cracking down on people flouting a mask mandate but less happy when law enforcement is going after shop lifters.

Yes, there's often a lot of discussion about law enforcement priorities.

In general, law enforcement is used to prevent harmful behaviour that disrupts society, so preventing theft is typically high up on the list. I think the people decrying shop lifters being targetted are highlighting the hypocrisy of societies that celebrate people who can steal huge amounts of money (e.g. not paying for work/services provided due to them being a large organisation) and yet demonise people who are struggling to survive and end up stealing food.

I was somewhat on the fence about mask mandates (I'm in the UK by the way) as I didn't think the evidence for masks being effective was particularly strong, but I had no issue with wearing a mask in public as it seemed like a sensible precaution that wouldn't cause me any harm. Then, we had social distancing laws introduced which were fairly draconian, but most people tried to observe them. The real kicker was when Boris Johnson and his cronies were caught not following the laws that he himself had introduced.

  I don't think that applies if one of the sides is using rational arguments and statistics

In most debates I follow, each sides have their own statistics to back their reality. And from a purely rational and scientific point of views, statistics do not prove anything when they mean something, they are always manipulated and most qualities of our existence cannot be measured / put into quantities anyway. Stats are not a tool to prove you're right at all.

> Stats are not a tool to prove you're right at all

I agree - stats are a tool to try to figure out non-obvious links and trends to figure out what is actually happening. They can certainly be distorted (see mainstream media), but we shouldn't allow bad actors to prevent us making use of probably the best way to investigate population level effects.

No, I do not think so. I am genuinely curious whether you actually mean it ... or whether you are playing semantic game.

Absolutely not playing a semantic game. I chose my side of this crisis -- but steelmanning your own argument and understanding the other side is good to do

   It was simple. People without ethical limits seen their opening to weaponize fear and discomfort ... and succeeded.

People without ethical limits = people not wearing masks and not practicing social distancing

weaponize fear and discomfort = get close to others (masked) in public and breathe in front of them

People who are scared award power to leaders, and leaders use that power to advance their social agenda rather than merely try and solve the problem that scared people. It was ever thus.

Public health is not a technocratic field where there's always clearly one right answer. It presents itself as deciding on things that may hurt individuals but help the collective, and so it naturally attracts collectivists. In other words it's a political field, not a medical one. That then takes them into the realm of sides.

There’s nothing wrong with disagreement and discourse. As long as it’s founded in fact not emotion.

What’s sad today is how much of “sides” today is based on emotion not fact.

Very few facts in life are absolute.