Alternative voices were so hounded and smothered, during The Time of Hysteria, it’s a wonder they weren’t reduced to sending smoke signals.
certainly we now know a better assumption is that it would have slowed the spread which is valuable, but less so. assuming that the pandemic would have had no effect on the economy had we done nothing is a worse assumption IMO.
If there was spread of an actual deadly pathogen, you couldn’t have paid people to go elbow-to-elbow with others, in closed spaces, wearing handkerchiefs over their faces.
Chinese data sucks, but not sure it’s correct to say their crazy draconian policies did *nothing* to control the spread. That’s a pretty obviously false statement even when you look at more data reliable examples like Japan and New Zealand. Many countries that did much stricter lockdowns did pretty well at controlling the spread, but the issue is as soon as they open the virus would start immediately. It’s akin to kicking the can down the road. Even the craziest, most strict lockdown is only temporary. It obviously couldn’t be a permanent state. Made sense early on, made sense while waiting for vaccine, made sense to buy time in the midst of a surge. On the other hand trying to do it for 3 years like China was a huge mistake for them.
New Zealand, a virtual island prison for years; more draconian than China, certainly didn’t control the spread of deaths ... New Zealand records biggest increase in registered deaths in 100 years
Japan ? I know this pertains to masking. But Japan locked down hard. Not by decree, but voluntarily. For many months. It’s cities looked like ghost towns ...
Then we agree, you got the point I was trying to make. Massive lockdowns are only good for so long. And yes China’s data sucks that’s why I laugh when some compare the US death toll to places like India and China we know they weren’t counting all the dead. A) They couldn’t keep up and B) it would have made them look terrible, China in particular cares more about appearances than their own people.
China reporting 87,468 Covid deaths. US 1.13 million Covid deaths. China only off by 87,368. US off by 1.13 million.
Funeral director springs into action. Acts just in time to prevent Covid from spreading to corpse and killing the deceased again ...
In retrospect what lockdowns did is buy time for immunizations that reduced the lethality of the spread. But it did so at a great economic and social cost.
