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We unfortunately had (and in many places are still having) both an emotional and fear-driven reaction to the spread of the virus. A lot of people understand th

We unfortunately had (and in many places are still having) both an emotional and fear-driven reaction to the spread of the virus. A lot of people understand the risk is much lower than the measures used to contain it, such as full school closures and closing parks and playgrounds. In retrospect I hope we can admit at least those preventative measures were a mistake. My fear is that if another more serious virus lands on the scene, there will be no credibility to do it again.

amluto 6y ago
The park closures made very little sense. The playground closures made sense when people were worried about fomites, and the early lab studies (that largely measured the wrong thing) suggested that fomites were an issue. A school is neither a park nor a playground. Schools are mostly indoors, mostly in inexpensive buildings with correspondingly poor ventilation and/or air filtering, and have a lot of people talking and breathing the same air. This is a totally different situation.
vaidhy 6y ago
Is this science driven or emotion driven from the other side? If virus is airborne and can spread without symptoms, are you saying younger age group does not get the virus or does not show the symptoms? If they do get the virus, then they can spread it. The closures were to prevent the virus from spreading and I do not understand why the measures used to contain it are a mistake. From the OP, it seems clear that virus is airborne, spreads in clusters and people spread it before showing any symptoms. I am open to suggestions on what are the alternative ways of stopping the spread?
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  You are right. I think we are being gas-lighted. It's not about whether the current restrictions are the best or not. It's about whether anything should be done at all as evidenced by critics' lack of concrete proposals of what they would do instead. Presumably nothing.
  - mardifoufs 6y ago
    So doing something so disruptive is better than doing nothing even if we end up with the same result anyways because... At least we did something? Even if that's true, I keep hearing that argument and I think I'll keep hearing it a lot in the future which makes sense as we try to justify what happened. But it's not based on reality considering that the anti lockdown side had a pretty clear plan: quarantine those most vulnerable, spend any fraction of the enormous resources we spent on locking down everything on making sure to provide for those people. That way we could've also focused the testing capacity & PPE on a lot less people, making it that much easier to isolate them from the virus. Instead of allocating thr same amount of resources regardless of how at risk someone was. You can disagree with the position but I'm not sure how you could argue that it's "doing nothing".

amluto 6y ago

The park closures made very little sense. The playground closures made sense when people were worried about fomites, and the early lab studies (that largely measured the wrong thing) suggested that fomites were an issue. A school is neither a park nor a playground. Schools are mostly indoors, mostly in inexpensive buildings with correspondingly poor ventilation and/or air filtering, and have a lot of people talking and breathing the same air. This is a totally different situation.

vaidhy 6y ago

Is this science driven or emotion driven from the other side? If virus is airborne and can spread without symptoms, are you saying younger age group does not get the virus or does not show the symptoms? If they do get the virus, then they can spread it. The closures were to prevent the virus from spreading and I do not understand why the measures used to contain it are a mistake. From the OP, it seems clear that virus is airborne, spreads in clusters and people spread it before showing any symptoms. I am open to suggestions on what are the alternative ways of stopping the spread?

galaxyLogic 6y ago
You are right. I think we are being gas-lighted. It's not about whether the current restrictions are the best or not. It's about whether anything should be done at all as evidenced by critics' lack of concrete proposals of what they would do instead. Presumably nothing.
- mardifoufs 6y ago
  So doing something so disruptive is better than doing nothing even if we end up with the same result anyways because... At least we did something? Even if that's true, I keep hearing that argument and I think I'll keep hearing it a lot in the future which makes sense as we try to justify what happened. But it's not based on reality considering that the anti lockdown side had a pretty clear plan: quarantine those most vulnerable, spend any fraction of the enormous resources we spent on locking down everything on making sure to provide for those people. That way we could've also focused the testing capacity & PPE on a lot less people, making it that much easier to isolate them from the virus. Instead of allocating thr same amount of resources regardless of how at risk someone was. You can disagree with the position but I'm not sure how you could argue that it's "doing nothing".