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Have to agree on the shutdown. It’s very easy to look back with 20:20 hindsight and say “duh, that was overkill”. But at the time we were sanitising every surfa

Have to agree on the shutdown. It’s very easy to look back with 20:20 hindsight and say “duh, that was overkill”. But at the time we were sanitising every surface because we didn’t even know how COVID spread, much less exactly how dangerous it was. The shutdown was a panic move but the panic wasn’t unjustified at the time. I will say, though, that the shutdown went on too long. It was originally sold as a stopgap to allow us to set up testing, track and trace infrastructure etc etc and the government by and large just… didn’t. So there was no clear path out of it.

gjsman-1000 5y ago
I had family members telling me that the news was spreading fear and panic back then, and that we should not lock down even for two weeks because, in their own words, “they won’t let us out.” I was skeptical and accepted the lockdown for two weeks. We only just started getting out more than three months later. Either my family was really unusually right… or there was a percentage of people saying it was a bad idea that was blissfully ignored and given no voice. And now that they were shown to be completely right, we pretend they don’t exist or lump them into the anti-vax crowd even though these groups are distinctly different with some overlap.
- magicalist 5y ago
  > that we should not lock down even for two weeks because, in their own words, “they won’t let us out.” > And now that they were shown to be completely right Only if we define literally any mitigation (like indoor masks, and often not even that, depending on the state) as not letting us out.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    No - like they literally wouldn’t let us out. They had to attend church for months watching only from their parked vehicles and with their windows shut. And somebody had their windows open once so the church got a threatening letter from the city from an informant neighbor across the street.
    - magicalist 5y ago
      Sure, but that's actually been shown to be one of the better early pandemic choices. Three months of not gathering inside a church when there were no vaccines and treatments were so primitive and often completely ineffective. As for not opening a car window, I'm obviously not informed about every city's policies, but if true, sounds dumb but irrelevant to your point. I assume used to paint restrictions in a ridiculous light?
      - gjsman-1000 5y ago
        I’m not painting it in a ridiculous light when it was actually ridiculous. There is and was no evidence then or now that you can catch COVID from the car next door with the windows open. The church offered workarounds, like two pews spacing between families (over 6’ easily) and spaced-out folding-chair overflow in the basement. City didn’t care.
    - drekk 5y ago
      That's your anecdata, why should we treat it as representative? I was delivering food throughout the pandemic and not one person I handed the food to wore a mask (even when all deliveries were supposed to be no contact) We didn't have any vaccines or effective treatments during the 3 month soft lockdown, you think it would be better to have congregations every Sunday to increase that spread? Or is God going to send us to hell for not attending mass during a plague? It's so frustrating because the "lockdown" was doomed from the moment it wasn't enforced. Like you don't get a "threatening letter" if you posess a gram of cannabis. Our criminal justice system comes down hard except when it's people who don't care about public health. So yeah, we wasted like 3 months because most Americans prefer eating indoors at Applebee's to keeping disabled or elderly people around (and everyone else healthy). COVID has really shown me how much eugenics is still alive in the US that people can do a mental calculus about who is "expendable"
      - chrismcb 5y ago
        I'm not exactly sure what your point is here. It wasn't possible to eat at Applebee's, because it was closed. People who tried to stay in business were drug of to jail. The lockdowns we're effective. But lockdowns aren't really possible. The virus is/was going to spread almost no matter what we did. If you are worried about the disabled and elderly, the solution isn't to lockdown the entire society. And if you compare USA to other countries, including Sweden, other numbers are fairly similar.
- pm90 5y ago
  When you have a global pandemic, it’s difficult to predict much. While the Government should absolutely have done more, note that they did pass pandemic relief legislation to help businesses and people through the worst of the pandemic. Should they have done more? Absolutely… and the fumble by Biden when his PressSec joked about sending testing kits to everyone for free was a very let them eat cake moment.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    Having bad things that happen to us, and having some unpredictability, is no excuse for societal panic.
- afavour 5y ago
  That’s still applying hindsight logic, though. At the start of the pandemic we didn’t know enough about the virus to know what was and was not necessary. Your family applied their skepticism of government to speculate that the lockdown would be a long one. That speculation would turn out to be correct but unless you’re in a family of epidemiologists they weren’t correct because they understood the virus better than anyone else. Let’s say we flip a coin. I call heads. You tails. It’s heads. So I was correct. But at the moment I made my prediction I wasn't correct, I was just speculating. There was no way to know for sure.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    Then the correct response should have been for experts to say they didn’t know, instead of saying the lockdowns were the solution. And then shouting for months that any failures were due to noncompliance. And maybe offer a split deal. Anyone who wants to lock down, go ahead, here’s some protections. Don’t want to lock down? Your body your choice.
    - afavour 5y ago
      > Then the correct response should have been for experts to say they didn’t know, instead of saying the lockdowns were the solution. That kind of is why they said: that lockdowns were about the only reliable tool until we understood more, built out testing infrastructure, track and trace etc… it’s just that the government then didn’t do any of that. > And maybe offer a split deal. Anyone who wants to lock down, go ahead, here’s some protections. Don’t want to lock down? Your body your choice. Even a cursory look towards labor rights in the US would make it very clear it wouldn’t be “your body your choice”, it would be “want to keep your job? Turn up to work or you’re fired”.
      - gjsman-1000 5y ago
        I’m can understand that, but here’s the thing that still grids my gears. There were people and even doctors back then saying they didn’t know it was a good idea. There were people back then worried about how it would affect education, suicide attempts (this article!), and businesses, and whether the cure was worse than the problem. These people were not allowed to speak, in policies or on television. If they spoke on social media, say they want people to die and they are heartless. Once the vaccine comes out, lump them in with the anti-vaxxers. The cure was worse than the problem. Except we got screwed and the problem remains.
- lancesells 5y ago
  I don't think anyone can be "right" in this situation. Without the lockdown or precautions what would the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths have looked like? Would hospitals have been overwhelmed and all sorts of collateral damage happened? In my opinion it's really all best guess as to what the right thing to do was at the beginning.

gjsman-1000 5y ago

I had family members telling me that the news was spreading fear and panic back then, and that we should not lock down even for two weeks because, in their own words, “they won’t let us out.” I was skeptical and accepted the lockdown for two weeks. We only just started getting out more than three months later. Either my family was really unusually right… or there was a percentage of people saying it was a bad idea that was blissfully ignored and given no voice. And now that they were shown to be completely right, we pretend they don’t exist or lump them into the anti-vax crowd even though these groups are distinctly different with some overlap.

magicalist 5y ago
> that we should not lock down even for two weeks because, in their own words, “they won’t let us out.” > And now that they were shown to be completely right Only if we define literally any mitigation (like indoor masks, and often not even that, depending on the state) as not letting us out.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  No - like they literally wouldn’t let us out. They had to attend church for months watching only from their parked vehicles and with their windows shut. And somebody had their windows open once so the church got a threatening letter from the city from an informant neighbor across the street.
  - magicalist 5y ago
    Sure, but that's actually been shown to be one of the better early pandemic choices. Three months of not gathering inside a church when there were no vaccines and treatments were so primitive and often completely ineffective. As for not opening a car window, I'm obviously not informed about every city's policies, but if true, sounds dumb but irrelevant to your point. I assume used to paint restrictions in a ridiculous light?
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      I’m not painting it in a ridiculous light when it was actually ridiculous. There is and was no evidence then or now that you can catch COVID from the car next door with the windows open. The church offered workarounds, like two pews spacing between families (over 6’ easily) and spaced-out folding-chair overflow in the basement. City didn’t care.
  - drekk 5y ago
    That's your anecdata, why should we treat it as representative? I was delivering food throughout the pandemic and not one person I handed the food to wore a mask (even when all deliveries were supposed to be no contact) We didn't have any vaccines or effective treatments during the 3 month soft lockdown, you think it would be better to have congregations every Sunday to increase that spread? Or is God going to send us to hell for not attending mass during a plague? It's so frustrating because the "lockdown" was doomed from the moment it wasn't enforced. Like you don't get a "threatening letter" if you posess a gram of cannabis. Our criminal justice system comes down hard except when it's people who don't care about public health. So yeah, we wasted like 3 months because most Americans prefer eating indoors at Applebee's to keeping disabled or elderly people around (and everyone else healthy). COVID has really shown me how much eugenics is still alive in the US that people can do a mental calculus about who is "expendable"
    - chrismcb 5y ago
      I'm not exactly sure what your point is here. It wasn't possible to eat at Applebee's, because it was closed. People who tried to stay in business were drug of to jail. The lockdowns we're effective. But lockdowns aren't really possible. The virus is/was going to spread almost no matter what we did. If you are worried about the disabled and elderly, the solution isn't to lockdown the entire society. And if you compare USA to other countries, including Sweden, other numbers are fairly similar.
pm90 5y ago
When you have a global pandemic, it’s difficult to predict much. While the Government should absolutely have done more, note that they did pass pandemic relief legislation to help businesses and people through the worst of the pandemic. Should they have done more? Absolutely… and the fumble by Biden when his PressSec joked about sending testing kits to everyone for free was a very let them eat cake moment.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Having bad things that happen to us, and having some unpredictability, is no excuse for societal panic.
afavour 5y ago
That’s still applying hindsight logic, though. At the start of the pandemic we didn’t know enough about the virus to know what was and was not necessary. Your family applied their skepticism of government to speculate that the lockdown would be a long one. That speculation would turn out to be correct but unless you’re in a family of epidemiologists they weren’t correct because they understood the virus better than anyone else. Let’s say we flip a coin. I call heads. You tails. It’s heads. So I was correct. But at the moment I made my prediction I wasn't correct, I was just speculating. There was no way to know for sure.
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Then the correct response should have been for experts to say they didn’t know, instead of saying the lockdowns were the solution. And then shouting for months that any failures were due to noncompliance. And maybe offer a split deal. Anyone who wants to lock down, go ahead, here’s some protections. Don’t want to lock down? Your body your choice.
  - afavour 5y ago
    > Then the correct response should have been for experts to say they didn’t know, instead of saying the lockdowns were the solution. That kind of is why they said: that lockdowns were about the only reliable tool until we understood more, built out testing infrastructure, track and trace etc… it’s just that the government then didn’t do any of that. > And maybe offer a split deal. Anyone who wants to lock down, go ahead, here’s some protections. Don’t want to lock down? Your body your choice. Even a cursory look towards labor rights in the US would make it very clear it wouldn’t be “your body your choice”, it would be “want to keep your job? Turn up to work or you’re fired”.
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      I’m can understand that, but here’s the thing that still grids my gears. There were people and even doctors back then saying they didn’t know it was a good idea. There were people back then worried about how it would affect education, suicide attempts (this article!), and businesses, and whether the cure was worse than the problem. These people were not allowed to speak, in policies or on television. If they spoke on social media, say they want people to die and they are heartless. Once the vaccine comes out, lump them in with the anti-vaxxers. The cure was worse than the problem. Except we got screwed and the problem remains.
lancesells 5y ago
I don't think anyone can be "right" in this situation. Without the lockdown or precautions what would the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths have looked like? Would hospitals have been overwhelmed and all sorts of collateral damage happened? In my opinion it's really all best guess as to what the right thing to do was at the beginning.