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> The non-medical harm due to COVID-19 is wholly disproportional to non-medical harms for flu, it's orders of magnitude worse.... What did we gain for it? We'r

> The non-medical harm due to COVID-19 is wholly disproportional to non-medical harms for flu, it's orders of magnitude worse.... What did we gain for it? We're lowering the curve. If we let the infection spread unabated, most hospital systems will swiftly be overrun. Just as in Italy when the outbreak first occurred, we would have people dying in the streets due to lack of care, leading to complete and total collapse of trust in the healthcare and governmental systems. The lockdowns are absolutely necessary to avoid panic and potential societal breakdown. It's hard to imagine because it's not the path we've taken. The lockdowns happened specifically because at the time, the two places with widespread spread of the virus(China, Italy) had overrun hospitals. The lockdown was implemented to pause the system and determine just exactly how bad this was and come up with a response.

xyzzyz 6y ago
> If we let the infection spread unabated, most hospital systems will swiftly be overrun. There is no reason to believe that. The hospitals weren't overrun in New York City, where the infection was not only not abated, but in fact the policy of sending infected people to nursing homes, and requiring them to accept them. Texas and Florida had very little cases before they locked down, and only started growing after lockdowns were mostly lifted. At no point were their hospital systems overwhelmed. > The lockdowns are absolutely necessary to avoid panic and potential societal breakdown. No, it's the lockdowns that are inducing panic. There was no panic during 1968 Hong Kong flu, which up until recently was worse than COVID-19 -- it only recently over took it. Where was the panic in Sweden? > The lockdown was implemented to pause the system and determine just exactly how bad this was and come up with a response. Why did so many lockdown measures persist, then? Sheer arbitrariness of it all shows pretty clearly that at this point is more about politician's power trip and sending message of doing something, and not actual public health concerns.

xyzzyz 6y ago

> If we let the infection spread unabated, most hospital systems will swiftly be overrun. There is no reason to believe that. The hospitals weren't overrun in New York City, where the infection was not only not abated, but in fact the policy of sending infected people to nursing homes, and requiring them to accept them. Texas and Florida had very little cases before they locked down, and only started growing after lockdowns were mostly lifted. At no point were their hospital systems overwhelmed. > The lockdowns are absolutely necessary to avoid panic and potential societal breakdown. No, it's the lockdowns that are inducing panic. There was no panic during 1968 Hong Kong flu, which up until recently was worse than COVID-19 -- it only recently over took it. Where was the panic in Sweden? > The lockdown was implemented to pause the system and determine just exactly how bad this was and come up with a response. Why did so many lockdown measures persist, then? Sheer arbitrariness of it all shows pretty clearly that at this point is more about politician's power trip and sending message of doing something, and not actual public health concerns.