That’s actually not what I said. I’m saying there were lockdowns in the most important regions (Miami-Dade for example), that people behaved as though there wer

That’s actually not what I said. I’m saying there were lockdowns in the most important regions (Miami-Dade for example), that people behaved as though there were lockdowns in at risk areas (nursing homes), and that people are still behaving with lockdown-style precautions. All of these things produced a flatter curve, and have also to a certain extent done so in Sweden where people followed many (not all) lockdown precautions without official government decree. Just because the government didn’t say things were locked down doesn’t mean they weren’t in practice. Look at Sweden’s GDP losses, restaurant attendance, movie attendance, you’ll find they haven’t avoided massive economic damage. In exchange they also have a pretty high death rate. These things are complicated, but it’s pretty clear lockdown behavior cuts infection spread. It’s also pretty clear people are terrified of getting sick, so they’ll adopt the behavior to a certain degree regardless of decree. This means issuing a decree or not doesn’t make you avoid economic pain, but a decree might make it easier to guide the right actions and give pretext to minimize economic pain via external support.