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I don't understand why people still blame the lockdowns. When the lockdowns started, it was unknown how dangerous Covid actually was. It could have killed 20%,

I don't understand why people still blame the lockdowns. When the lockdowns started, it was unknown how dangerous Covid actually was. It could have killed 20%, or reduced lifespan by 30%, or something. Nobody knew. It takes 20/20 hindsight to blame lockdowns for what was a generational catastrophe. It's like blaming shelter in place requirements instead of the bombing of the reich.

grosswait 11mo ago
Nobody knew, that is true. But not everyone was in agreement, it only seemed that way because dissenting voices were silenced. Do some research and you’ll find that there were plenty of people predicting bad outcomes from the lockdowns. I was not one of them, but they exist for sure.
- chiefalchemist 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - mycall 11mo ago
    From day one, I was hearing about suggestions of social distancing and NK1 masks would do 80% of the work for you. It took waaay to long for that information to disseminate.
    - chiefalchemist 11mo ago
      My standing statement is: The idea of a pandemic was so well established that Hollywood made multiple bad movies about the idea. The other key piece that gets magically brushed aside is that there was a pandemic during the Obama administration. Obviously not as severe, but nonetheless a warning. Yet we were somehow unprepared just a few years later? And those same incompetent entities and experts were the source of our inflation understanding and response to COVID? I think not. Very little passes the smell test. It didn’t them. It’s even less so - if you look & listen - now.
    - jerlam 11mo ago
      The playbook we followed was straight out of the 1918 pandemic. Unfortunately, so was the public response to it.
      - chiefalchemist 11mo ago
        What you’re failing to acknowledge is the public was right. It was “leadership” across the board that failed. It’s been documented and continues to be documented. It’s simply not advertised, else the lack of trust gap would widen and be more than justified. The failure(s), we are worse off for it at this point. The handling of the COVID 19 pandemic was as misguided and anemic as Bush’s “Keep shopping” (i.e., his advise to the country in response to 9/11). Blaming those without power for the shortcomings of those with power is revisionist history bullshit. T
        deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
sillyfluke 11mo ago
To be fair to the parent, despite what they think about the lockdown decision now, it says nothing about whether or not they thought it made any sense then. It's perferctly possible to believe that the lockdown was a reasonable decision with what was known then, and still believe that the lockdown is to blame for certain unavoidable consequences down the line. Again, the parent might not believe this as well but their point can be taken separately fron your complaint. Since several generations of Americans are not familiar with a drawn out sustained attack on acceptable cost-of-living parameters, the observation that "people are more awful" should be familiar to many people who lived and endured in places that have had decades-long deteriorating econonmies. If the economy or subjective economic perception had not tanked post-lockdown, the awfulness of people would be much less pronounced I believe.
StopDisinfo910 11mo ago
I seem to remember that Sweden applied the WHO recommendations as they were written and didn’t lock down because the damage of locking down is huge and everybody dog pilled on them about how it was stupid. Turn out their excess mortality was quickly better than the other Nordic countries and their economy and mental health did better if I remember correctly. People should complain more about the lockdowns. Most of them were extremely poorly implemented and stupidly managed.
- StopDisinfo910 11mo ago
  To the people downvoting me, you are welcome to actually look at the numbers. [1] Feel free to read about what it shows about lockdowns. [2] [3] [4] I understand that the US has somehow turned this topic into a political debate and people hate facing that they might have been wrong but I am thankfully not from this part of the world and the evidence is not in favour of lockdowns ever being such a good idea. If you read the BBC article, you will see that we have reached such a polarised and abusive moment in time that even some experts are scared commenting on the available data. [1] https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/34/4/737/7675929?login=false https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/34/4/737/7675929?log... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-024-01216-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-024-01216-7 [3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecaf.12611 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecaf.12611 [4] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250304-the-countries-that-never-locked-down-for-covid-19 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250304-the-countries-th...
  - GOD_Over_Djinn 11mo ago
    When I was younger, I thought of dems as the party of logic and reason, and repubs as bible-thumpers. I don’t think this was entirely wrong, but the unthinking dogmatism of left-leaning people about lockdowns did a lot to disabuse me of that notion.
- op00to 11mo ago
  You remember incorrectly. Norway and Sweden took opposite approaches in 2020—Norway used strict lockdowns, tight border controls, and intensive outbreak tracking, while Sweden kept society largely open. The results weren’t subtle. As the Juul paper puts it: “That resulted in 477 COVID-19 deaths (Norway) and 9,737 (Sweden) in 2020, respectively.” Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8807990/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8807990/
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
diogenescynic 11mo ago
[flagged]
- hasperdi 11mo ago
  > .001% higher than the flu That isn't true. Just from this paper https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9115089 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9115089 ... COVID-19 killed roughly five to seven times more hospitalized older adults than influenza. Anecdotal, my uncle, several friends' relatives died from COVID during those lockdowns. I don't know / heard anyone died because of flu (in my extended circle of people I know)
  - diogenescynic 11mo ago
    [flagged]
  - listenallyall 11mo ago
    Most people are not a "hospitalized older adult". Yet they treated everyone, regardless of age, gender, health as if they were on death's door. The lock downs were absolutely overkill and went on far, far too long.
- ghc 11mo ago
  Propaganda? COVID was the third most common verified cause of death in the US in the first 18 months after the lockdown started in March, and that's despite the lockdown. That's 10x more deaths per month than the particularly bad flu last year. Do you not remember the morgue trucks? The whole health system was overwhelmed.
  - diogenescynic 11mo ago
    [flagged]
  - shmeeed 11mo ago
    Too many people either never saw or forgot about the morgue trucks. Or the footage that showed flocks of vultures circling over south american cities from afar. Desperate people coughing and dying in their own cars in hospitals' driveways. Body bags littering the floors of hospitals in third world countries. All of that happened, but it went right over a lot of people's heads, and nobody talks about it anymore because it became such a sore and divisive topic and we're all glad it's over. I remember well the video showing a whole column of military trucks transporting bodies out of the city of Bergamo, Italy, on March 19th, 2020. I took a screenshot because the magnitude of what this meant gave me shivers. It was one of those moments when the world seemed to stop for a minute and was changed forever like on 9/11, to me at least. Ever since, I can't find much common ground for discussion with people claiming it was just a flu. You either acknowledge the difference or you don't.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
rufus_foreman 11mo ago
Two weeks to flatten the curve. Institutions can only lose their credibility once. That was one of the worst things that Covid did.
GOD_Over_Djinn 11mo ago
Some, including myself, were against lockdowns from day 1, and were viciously attacked for it.
- fragmede 11mo ago
  It's a pretty anti-social viewpoint. Why do you think you shouldn't have been?
  - GOD_Over_Djinn 11mo ago
    It’s not anti-social, it is pro-social. To stand for the right of people to live freely, for children to get an education and to socialize with their peers, for businesses to serve their communities and provide jobs for people to feed their families. You are the anti-social one, who would condemn entire populations to house arrest based upon dubious-at-best ideas. In my city, even outdoor gatherings of more than five people were prohibited. It was so absurd as to be almost comical, if the consequences weren’t so tragic. Are you truly blind to the damage wrought by shutting down the entire world at the flip of a switch? Children are in crisis, inflation skyrocketed, people cannot afford to live, buy homes, start a family, get an education… and you have the nerve to call me anti-social? And what did it accomplish? Did it actually save lives? I think not, especially when compared to targeted protection and support of vulnerable populations (elderly, immune compromised) rather than a blanket shutdown of the entire country. Once this issue became a red vs blue thing, everyone collectively turned their brains off. The above commenter is a prime example.
    - fragmede 11mo ago
      Basic logic here: the things you’re defending only work when the people who make them possible aren’t getting knocked out by uncontrolled spread. Kids don’t get an education if teachers and staff are sick. Businesses don’t serve communities if workers are out in waves. Families don’t stay afloat if workplaces shut down because too many people are ill. You can absolutely critique the execution and the results. Plenty of it was messy. But pretending that doing nothing was somehow pro social ignores the obvious: collective safety is what keeps all those freedoms functioning in the first place.

grosswait 11mo ago

Nobody knew, that is true. But not everyone was in agreement, it only seemed that way because dissenting voices were silenced. Do some research and you’ll find that there were plenty of people predicting bad outcomes from the lockdowns. I was not one of them, but they exist for sure.

chiefalchemist 11mo ago
[flagged]
- mycall 11mo ago
  From day one, I was hearing about suggestions of social distancing and NK1 masks would do 80% of the work for you. It took waaay to long for that information to disseminate.
  - chiefalchemist 11mo ago
    My standing statement is: The idea of a pandemic was so well established that Hollywood made multiple bad movies about the idea. The other key piece that gets magically brushed aside is that there was a pandemic during the Obama administration. Obviously not as severe, but nonetheless a warning. Yet we were somehow unprepared just a few years later? And those same incompetent entities and experts were the source of our inflation understanding and response to COVID? I think not. Very little passes the smell test. It didn’t them. It’s even less so - if you look & listen - now.
  - jerlam 11mo ago
    The playbook we followed was straight out of the 1918 pandemic. Unfortunately, so was the public response to it.
    - chiefalchemist 11mo ago
      What you’re failing to acknowledge is the public was right. It was “leadership” across the board that failed. It’s been documented and continues to be documented. It’s simply not advertised, else the lack of trust gap would widen and be more than justified. The failure(s), we are worse off for it at this point. The handling of the COVID 19 pandemic was as misguided and anemic as Bush’s “Keep shopping” (i.e., his advise to the country in response to 9/11). Blaming those without power for the shortcomings of those with power is revisionist history bullshit. T
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]

sillyfluke 11mo ago

To be fair to the parent, despite what they think about the lockdown decision now, it says nothing about whether or not they thought it made any sense then. It's perferctly possible to believe that the lockdown was a reasonable decision with what was known then, and still believe that the lockdown is to blame for certain unavoidable consequences down the line. Again, the parent might not believe this as well but their point can be taken separately fron your complaint. Since several generations of Americans are not familiar with a drawn out sustained attack on acceptable cost-of-living parameters, the observation that "people are more awful" should be familiar to many people who lived and endured in places that have had decades-long deteriorating econonmies. If the economy or subjective economic perception had not tanked post-lockdown, the awfulness of people would be much less pronounced I believe.

StopDisinfo910 11mo ago

I seem to remember that Sweden applied the WHO recommendations as they were written and didn’t lock down because the damage of locking down is huge and everybody dog pilled on them about how it was stupid. Turn out their excess mortality was quickly better than the other Nordic countries and their economy and mental health did better if I remember correctly. People should complain more about the lockdowns. Most of them were extremely poorly implemented and stupidly managed.

StopDisinfo910 11mo ago
To the people downvoting me, you are welcome to actually look at the numbers. [1] Feel free to read about what it shows about lockdowns. [2] [3] [4] I understand that the US has somehow turned this topic into a political debate and people hate facing that they might have been wrong but I am thankfully not from this part of the world and the evidence is not in favour of lockdowns ever being such a good idea. If you read the BBC article, you will see that we have reached such a polarised and abusive moment in time that even some experts are scared commenting on the available data. [1] https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/34/4/737/7675929?login=false https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/article/34/4/737/7675929?log... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-024-01216-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-024-01216-7 [3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecaf.12611 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecaf.12611 [4] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250304-the-countries-that-never-locked-down-for-covid-19 https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250304-the-countries-th...
- GOD_Over_Djinn 11mo ago
  When I was younger, I thought of dems as the party of logic and reason, and repubs as bible-thumpers. I don’t think this was entirely wrong, but the unthinking dogmatism of left-leaning people about lockdowns did a lot to disabuse me of that notion.
op00to 11mo ago
You remember incorrectly. Norway and Sweden took opposite approaches in 2020—Norway used strict lockdowns, tight border controls, and intensive outbreak tracking, while Sweden kept society largely open. The results weren’t subtle. As the Juul paper puts it: “That resulted in 477 COVID-19 deaths (Norway) and 9,737 (Sweden) in 2020, respectively.” Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8807990/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8807990/

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

diogenescynic 11mo ago

[flagged]

hasperdi 11mo ago
> .001% higher than the flu That isn't true. Just from this paper https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9115089 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9115089 ... COVID-19 killed roughly five to seven times more hospitalized older adults than influenza. Anecdotal, my uncle, several friends' relatives died from COVID during those lockdowns. I don't know / heard anyone died because of flu (in my extended circle of people I know)
- diogenescynic 11mo ago
  [flagged]
- listenallyall 11mo ago
  Most people are not a "hospitalized older adult". Yet they treated everyone, regardless of age, gender, health as if they were on death's door. The lock downs were absolutely overkill and went on far, far too long.
ghc 11mo ago
Propaganda? COVID was the third most common verified cause of death in the US in the first 18 months after the lockdown started in March, and that's despite the lockdown. That's 10x more deaths per month than the particularly bad flu last year. Do you not remember the morgue trucks? The whole health system was overwhelmed.
- diogenescynic 11mo ago
  [flagged]
- shmeeed 11mo ago
  Too many people either never saw or forgot about the morgue trucks. Or the footage that showed flocks of vultures circling over south american cities from afar. Desperate people coughing and dying in their own cars in hospitals' driveways. Body bags littering the floors of hospitals in third world countries. All of that happened, but it went right over a lot of people's heads, and nobody talks about it anymore because it became such a sore and divisive topic and we're all glad it's over. I remember well the video showing a whole column of military trucks transporting bodies out of the city of Bergamo, Italy, on March 19th, 2020. I took a screenshot because the magnitude of what this meant gave me shivers. It was one of those moments when the world seemed to stop for a minute and was changed forever like on 9/11, to me at least. Ever since, I can't find much common ground for discussion with people claiming it was just a flu. You either acknowledge the difference or you don't.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

rufus_foreman 11mo ago

Two weeks to flatten the curve. Institutions can only lose their credibility once. That was one of the worst things that Covid did.

GOD_Over_Djinn 11mo ago

Some, including myself, were against lockdowns from day 1, and were viciously attacked for it.

fragmede 11mo ago
It's a pretty anti-social viewpoint. Why do you think you shouldn't have been?
- GOD_Over_Djinn 11mo ago
  It’s not anti-social, it is pro-social. To stand for the right of people to live freely, for children to get an education and to socialize with their peers, for businesses to serve their communities and provide jobs for people to feed their families. You are the anti-social one, who would condemn entire populations to house arrest based upon dubious-at-best ideas. In my city, even outdoor gatherings of more than five people were prohibited. It was so absurd as to be almost comical, if the consequences weren’t so tragic. Are you truly blind to the damage wrought by shutting down the entire world at the flip of a switch? Children are in crisis, inflation skyrocketed, people cannot afford to live, buy homes, start a family, get an education… and you have the nerve to call me anti-social? And what did it accomplish? Did it actually save lives? I think not, especially when compared to targeted protection and support of vulnerable populations (elderly, immune compromised) rather than a blanket shutdown of the entire country. Once this issue became a red vs blue thing, everyone collectively turned their brains off. The above commenter is a prime example.
  - fragmede 11mo ago
    Basic logic here: the things you’re defending only work when the people who make them possible aren’t getting knocked out by uncontrolled spread. Kids don’t get an education if teachers and staff are sick. Businesses don’t serve communities if workers are out in waves. Families don’t stay afloat if workplaces shut down because too many people are ill. You can absolutely critique the execution and the results. Plenty of it was messy. But pretending that doing nothing was somehow pro social ignores the obvious: collective safety is what keeps all those freedoms functioning in the first place.