I think you're missing the point about lockdowns. I will give you an interesting datapoint : this is the first time that Shanghai has come under lockdown. The m

I think you're missing the point about lockdowns. I will give you an interesting datapoint : this is the first time that Shanghai has come under lockdown. The majority of China did not have to go through any lockdown at all. When you lockdown earlier and for longer, paradoxically, you spend orders of magnitude less time in aggregate under lockdown. You're from the Netherlands, and I'm Canadian - we both spent much more time under lockdown than the average Chinese citizen. And their goverment isn't massively more capable than ours and is definitely capable of fucking up, it's just we chose a course of action that leads to more lockdowns and more COVID. We do not come into contact with viral infections with a significant risk of death and that reinfect you in mere months every day. Actually, I struggle to think of any other virus with these. > But it won't be a week or two of lockdown. The Netherlands had a major lockdown this christmas for Omikron, they took it too seriously as they wanted to wait for confirmation it was not going to overload the health system. After they lifted things, it came right up (though didn't overload the health system, as per experience from other countries). It will be a week or two. The way the Netherlands locked down is ineffective, because they waited way too long. If you wait untill the health system is on the verge of collapsing every time, you will paradoxically have many more lockdowns. If you lockdown cities, or even neighborhoods, as early as there are a few cases, the majority of the country will never even be locked down. > With the contagiousness at the high level of Omikron, a lockdown will only be effective for its duration. We'll be in a lockdown nightmare. That's simply not true. You get that impression because me and you both lived through very poorly designed lockdowns from the very beginning of the pandemic, which all ended up the same way. Omicron presents a more arduous version of the same problem - if you lockdown too late, you have to lockdown longer. If you lockdown too short, you will have to lockdown again. The difference with Omicron is that lockdowns have to be engaged earlier, that's all.