> Perhaps because it was always possible to do tiered lockdowns in a way that avoided these negative side effects but the only criticism I ever saw was "lockdow

> Perhaps because it was always possible to do tiered lockdowns in a way that avoided these negative side effects but the only criticism I ever saw was "lockdown bad because covid is fake, don't get vaccinated." I'm not going to poke through your post history but on HN I never saw a good faith solutions-oriented criticism to lockdown measures. That's conflating wildly different/disjoint beliefs into a single bucket. I have always thought lockdowns (of the type done by some European countries, UK, New Zealand, Australia, China) were a wildly disproportionate measure, and were doing more harm than good, but I also never thought COVID was "fake", and enthusiastically got vaccinated as soon as I could. An overall reduction of harm would have been achieved by simply not doing those lockdowns, in my opinion. > From what I saw of the rest of the world COVID lockdown responses were really weird, though. In Taiwan we also had lockdowns but they seemed quite sensible (though parts were absurd). [...] Similarly in southeast Asian countries I was in during the pandemic, most of the time outdoor activities were possible with sensible precautions. But it's also the case that people tend to have a more cohesive community, with extended family around, etc, which makes lockdowns more tolerable (as long as they're not the extreme kind of "do not leave your house for any reason" lockdown). That kind of local community cohesion is often not there in larger cities in Europe/US, so if your usual social activities (pub, cafe, organised events) are banned, you might not be left with much.