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> Lockdowns necessarily cause stratification by socioeconomic status rather than by risk. Even in an 'effective' lockdown, we still see spread among the "essent

> Lockdowns necessarily cause stratification by socioeconomic status rather than by risk. Even in an 'effective' lockdown, we still see spread among the "essential workers" who keep society going, and in their households, which are disproportionately likely to be multigen. How do you explain countries like Vietnam, China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, where Covid was eliminated from their societies via lockdown (and border control to prevent re-introduction) before the Delta variant spread? It's true that only China and Taiwan have retained Covid-Zero status in the face of Delta, but it seems like the success of lockdowns turns upon characteristics of the pathogen including its population mortality (the more deadly the virus, the more likely the population will support and assist in extreme measures to control and eliminate it within national borders).

unityByFreedom 5y ago
> It's true that only China and Taiwan have retained Covid-Zero status in the face of Delta China now has local transmission in Xian, known for the terracotta warriors. It's arguable they never stopped local transmission and simply stopped reporting cases and deaths accurately once covid took off outside China. They stopped recording deaths at around 4,000 in March 2020.
native_samples 5y ago
COVID wasn't eliminated via lockdown. New Zealand wasn't really locked down up until quite recently, they "just" closed their borders and completely screwed all their citizens who were outside the country at the time. That appeared to work for a while but now they're having COVID waves anyway, and when that started it turned out they hadn't really bothered vaccinating because they felt COVID wasn't a problem for them. As for other places, for some reason COVID seems less severe in east Asia in general. You left out Japan where COVID has not been particularly serious and which also used quite light measures, especially in the early days. Really, this has been done to death by now. Lockdowns don't have any effect. Some people thought they did because the natural wave pattern happened to overlap with when lockdowns were brought in and epidemiologists - perhaps the most useless form of expertise in the world - were united in believing that COVID wasn't going to be seasonal, for no obvious reason. So they just ascribed the fall in cases to their brilliant policies instead of the true cause. Once COVID came back at different times in different countries much more data became available and it started to show the truth: NPIs like lockdowns, masks, contact tracing etc were all useless. Only very early and very harsh border controls seemed to have much effect, and even then only temporarily.

unityByFreedom 5y ago

> It's true that only China and Taiwan have retained Covid-Zero status in the face of Delta China now has local transmission in Xian, known for the terracotta warriors. It's arguable they never stopped local transmission and simply stopped reporting cases and deaths accurately once covid took off outside China. They stopped recording deaths at around 4,000 in March 2020.

native_samples 5y ago

COVID wasn't eliminated via lockdown. New Zealand wasn't really locked down up until quite recently, they "just" closed their borders and completely screwed all their citizens who were outside the country at the time. That appeared to work for a while but now they're having COVID waves anyway, and when that started it turned out they hadn't really bothered vaccinating because they felt COVID wasn't a problem for them. As for other places, for some reason COVID seems less severe in east Asia in general. You left out Japan where COVID has not been particularly serious and which also used quite light measures, especially in the early days. Really, this has been done to death by now. Lockdowns don't have any effect. Some people thought they did because the natural wave pattern happened to overlap with when lockdowns were brought in and epidemiologists - perhaps the most useless form of expertise in the world - were united in believing that COVID wasn't going to be seasonal, for no obvious reason. So they just ascribed the fall in cases to their brilliant policies instead of the true cause. Once COVID came back at different times in different countries much more data became available and it started to show the truth: NPIs like lockdowns, masks, contact tracing etc were all useless. Only very early and very harsh border controls seemed to have much effect, and even then only temporarily.