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Have we? It doesn't seem possible to permanently stop outbreaks without having either reached 20-25% of the population infected, or locking down until a cure or

Have we? It doesn't seem possible to permanently stop outbreaks without having either reached 20-25% of the population infected, or locking down until a cure or vaccine is discovered. Plenty of places that locked down much more stringently than the US are having new outbreaks now - Europe, New Zealand, Australia and even parts of China. Anyway, I seem to remember that extending the pandemic was the whole point of the lockdowns. The messaging at the beginning was that we would spread out cases over time, in order to keep under emergency healthcare capacity. Not prevent cases entirely. By that metric, hasn't the US been wildly successful? Or has the goal changed - and if so, why?

saagarjha 6y ago
Other places have managed to become entirely COVID-free due to properly following lockdown policies. The US is still gaining thousands of cases a day–the only reason this isn’t more is that most people are staying inside. The places you mentioned with “new outbreaks” have a handful of new cases, and yet are taking it significantly more seriously than the United States.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  Europe is having a handful of new cases? No, that isn’t true. Spain is reporting more than 10,000 new cases a day.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    I did not specifically mention Spain, I was thinking of the other things on your list that are actually countries–as far as I am aware, cases in Australia are still going down, in China they are a negligible number, in New Zealand they had a couple dozen that they immediately locked down over and will likely stop the spread of. But since you brought it up, let's look at Spain–why does it have so many new cases every day? Because they aren't following the policies!
    - umanwizard 6y ago
      Yes, that is exactly my point. > It doesn't seem possible to permanently stop outbreaks without having either reached 20-25% of the population infected, or locking down until a cure or vaccine is discovered. You can't magically make yourself immune to future outbreaks by locking down - the only way to avoid outbreaks in the absence of widespread immunity is to maintain the lockdown indefinitely, until a cure or vaccine is discovered and widely distributed. So, it's not true that we could have eliminated the virus and been happily back to normal in the US if we had just locked down harder/better/longer. We would either still be locked down with no end in sight, or have opened back up and now be experiencing another outbreak. Not sure about China, but FWIW Australia and NZ are still quite locked down.

saagarjha 6y ago

Other places have managed to become entirely COVID-free due to properly following lockdown policies. The US is still gaining thousands of cases a day–the only reason this isn’t more is that most people are staying inside. The places you mentioned with “new outbreaks” have a handful of new cases, and yet are taking it significantly more seriously than the United States.

umanwizard 6y ago
Europe is having a handful of new cases? No, that isn’t true. Spain is reporting more than 10,000 new cases a day.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I did not specifically mention Spain, I was thinking of the other things on your list that are actually countries–as far as I am aware, cases in Australia are still going down, in China they are a negligible number, in New Zealand they had a couple dozen that they immediately locked down over and will likely stop the spread of. But since you brought it up, let's look at Spain–why does it have so many new cases every day? Because they aren't following the policies!
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    Yes, that is exactly my point. > It doesn't seem possible to permanently stop outbreaks without having either reached 20-25% of the population infected, or locking down until a cure or vaccine is discovered. You can't magically make yourself immune to future outbreaks by locking down - the only way to avoid outbreaks in the absence of widespread immunity is to maintain the lockdown indefinitely, until a cure or vaccine is discovered and widely distributed. So, it's not true that we could have eliminated the virus and been happily back to normal in the US if we had just locked down harder/better/longer. We would either still be locked down with no end in sight, or have opened back up and now be experiencing another outbreak. Not sure about China, but FWIW Australia and NZ are still quite locked down.