> when they were (practically all) temporarily lifted for political reasons, the world did not stop turning and neither did any systems collapse. I've checked,

> when they were (practically all) temporarily lifted for political reasons, the world did not stop turning and neither did any systems collapse. I've checked, there's no point: It "worked"... but only for a short time! Now the number of reported deaths per day reached the highest since the start of epidemics. And before that short time of "everything's open", the measures enforced were among the strongest applied in Europe. So the whole episode doesn't prove anything. Yes, after the extremely strong lockdown a small country can pretend for a month or so that "everything's fine" and that is totally unsurprising: look at the shape of all exponential functions: the start always appears so close to the x axis. Only later the exponential property of the curve becomes obvious, especially knowing that a person infected today won't be immediately sick and even less dead -- it takes time. And the spread continues during the time most have no or mild symptoms. Big countries can do all that even longer before the problems can't be hidden. But sooner or later the need for new hospitals for newly infected patients becomes obvious, which is exactly what can be seen now. No country is going to bluff its way out of this pandemics. More than one tried. My favorite country is Vietnam: they still have zero deaths in a country with 100 million inhabitants. Maybe other countries should check what they are doing? Also, Taiwan has only 7 deaths up to now, having 23 million inhabitants. Thailand has only 58 deaths, with 70 million living there. These three countries have together 200 million living there and still less than 100 reported deaths. Taiwan banned the export of surgical masks and lifted it only a few days ago, and produced even 20 million masks per day(!) for its own needs: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3959712 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3959712 Think about it: it produced a new mask for every its citizen every day. Taiwan had around 20 cases total and exactly one death in the last two months.