Do people realize that being pro-lockdown is itself a “fundie” position in every way it’s possible to hold a “close-minded, willfully ignorant, obsessed” position?
Aside from destroying careers, destroying businesses, eroding liberty, undermining the financial stability of the country itself, causing non-COVID related health issues to be neglected with non-COVID patients turned away (or scared into staying home even when they have a medical emergency), delayed from cancer screenings, making a large number of kids fall behind on education with “online schools” that don’t really work that well for a great deal of kids (some who don’t even know how to use a computer), causing other health problems from lack of outdoor activity, increasing mental illnesses from lack of social interaction (no doubt at least some EDs too and suicides a lot harder to fix than COVID) and putting hundreds of millions of people in danger of starvation in the poorest countries - it isn’t even a solution that actually works.
The UK which has had utterly insane lockdown policies that intrude in private lives and even go as far as to ban your from purchasing certain “non-essential items” even if the store has both essential and non-essential items on display, this country actually has a slightly higher mortality rate compared to the US which did not fully lockdown (some states did, some didn’t, in many cases the restrictions were also not as severe as UK’s).
Hell, Sweden which did not lockdown or even impose any meaningful restrictions really has a lower mortality per million than a lot of the countries that had strict lockdowns.
You know why? Because they are not sustainable and even if you halt a rise in cases initially, people will get sick anyway once the lockdown can no longer be continued. This is not a world that’s functional with hermit families, there are entire professions that can’t be done remotely.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Should we talk about how elitist this is as well? It’s far easier to isolate when you’re already in a relationship, you have a nice big home with a yard or if you’re simply a computer nerd who stays indoors anyway.
I’ve read countless cases of young families with kids that had a nice small business in hospitality and are now basically broke and nearly homeless.
Countless better solutions have always been available. COVID is also not a dangerous disease for young people, for minors the flu is MORE not less dangerous, it only really starts to become significantly more dangerous than the flu past the age of 50 but with almost all deaths happening over 60. It would have been less costly in every way imaginable to simply help older or more vulnerable people to shelter in place (if they want to, no medical act should be forced, not hard to do either as you can give UBI temporarily to those with 0 income) while others go about their business. It’s also a valid option to be 80 and ignore every advice if you value your way of life over safety.
These measures will be talked about for years long after COVID is gone or diminished and the politicians who went along with them won’t be remembered kindly. By any objective standard, these nation-wide quarantines are nothing more than a crime against humanity. The lockdowns were implemented following China’s authoritarian model and were based on projections that failed to materialize anywhere and based on a mortality rate that was greatly exaggerated compared to the reality. IFR for COVID is nowhere near the 3.4% fatality rate we were initially told, that’s just CFR. Most COVID cases are not diagnosed as they don’t produce symptoms bad enough to warrant a test or hospitalization.
