In my region people is pretty sensible about mask use etc. We relaxed a bit, but people still take care. I've been to Madrid and Barcelona for work and people behaves like this never happened.
I hope I get a chance to a boost shot, because I know a couple of dudes that got covid and the side effects are pretty ugly. I'd rather be in my bed with fever for a couple of days.
Given that widespread vaccination does not stop infection from spreading, lockdowns seem arbitrary and pointless. Especially when you consider economic consequences, which also inflicts very real pain and suffering on the populace.
Anecdotally, it doesn't seem to have made any difference at all in the US, state by state.
Only because they're partial and temporary. NZ and Australia went into a full borders closed lockdown and were back in stadiums with tens of thousands while the epidemic was in full swing in the rest of the world.
I mean, I get that it's a morally difficult one because freedoms and rights and shit, but if the world went into lockdown for a month when this thing first came out, we wouldn't be in this situation.
The 'lockdowns' we get now are compromises; in my own country, their aim is to keep the economy going and kids going to school, even if workplaces and schools are probably the biggest spreaders. I say probably, because they announce new measures without providing evidence that the actions they take are the most effective at stopping the spread. Things like closing shops at 5; where are the facts that open shops after 5 are the biggest problem?
Excess mortality in the USA and the EU in 2020 were ~470k and ~580k deaths.
The population of the USA and the EU in Jan 2020 was ~329 and ~447 million.
The excess mortality in the USA and the EU in 2020 was ~143 vs ~129 excess deaths per 100.000 inhabitants. The USA had ~10% more excess deaths per capita than the EU.
People living in the EU during 2020 had statistically a significantly better chance of not dying of COVID than people living in the USA, even though COVID hit the EU first, which gave the USA longer time to prepare.
This doesn't really answer your question, because the answer is very personal. Some people were really scared and preferred to trade some freedom for more safety. And well we have many examples of vocal famous people that traded off safety for freedom, and died of COVID. These people would have probably been better off had they lived in the EU, even if they would have been breaking the law and paying fines.
There was no pan-Euro response nor was there a pan-American response, so these groupings are arbitrary. Unless you have an objective "score" that Euro lockdowns and policies on average went further than American lockdown policies, these numbers are meaningless.
You could easily justify the differences as deriving from Europe having an objectively healthier population and better healthcare systems than the US.
With such drastic policy differences you would expect to see a larger effect.
It's just a question of timing. Late for Madrid, nicely timed for my city.
Another new problem I see is that healthcare personnel is burnt-out. Not only because of the insane work-hours and all the jazz, they feel mistreated by politicians and society in general, and I have doubts that if they get called for a new emergency they'll go contribute in the same numbers.
So to answer your question, you would have to define 'objectively better'. Are you referring to economic outcomes, number of deaths or some other measurement?
There is not widespread vaccination, though. That's where your argument falls apart.
Look at the trends in Italy, UK, US, for example.
I agree the vaccine helps, but there is no clear impact on reducing spread if you look at infection data in aggregate.
We've gone from 0% vaccinated, to 60-70% with no discernable dip in infection counts.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02054-z
Vaccination rates in the US have been abysmal by developed world status, precisely because so many of you don't think vaccination works. It does work to dramatically slow spreading, but only if enough people take it up.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7...
But the virus is endemic and vaccines will not stop it from being caught by everybody at some point.
You can't lockdown the virus away. You can't stop the spread by canceling flights either. Just seems like awful policymaking driven by virtue signaling.
Covid is here forever, and that's life.
and by true, that means something you can actually validate isn't fake, while checking for ID at the same time. And also not allowing in un-vaccinated children because of fairness. Deadly viruses do not care about fairness
At least here in NY, USA - I have my vaccine passport checked very often, but verified with my ID about 10% of the time. So that wouldn't have the same effect
It is not the vaccine passports that stopped lockdown - in fact, there is no evidence they had any effect on transmission.
You are just pushing the work to be done by low-level employees at this point. Yes, it can work for a while but go talk to anyone who works in public event spaces (theaters, bars, cinemas, etc.) in, for example, Germany and you will see how much fatigue this causes.
And what happens when people get fatigued due to the extra workload created by forcing these measures to be taken by small businesses? People get sloppy, they get tired of a procedure that usually would take 2 minutes taking 15, chipping time away from other duties they are responsible for (and supervised). Over time they stop doing the checks properly and just like with other COVID measures, becomes increasingly ineffective.
I only had this realisation after chatting with some friends of friends in Berlin working in hospitality (hotels, bars, etc.) and events, almost every single one of them were exhausted from having to perform the extra checks on every customer, every shift, every play, every table they sit. They were trying really hard to not get sloppy because they actually care about the people, but it was clear how it was affecting them. It didn't look as a sustainable measure against COVID after 2 years of a pandemic.
That was also the fear I read voiced by experts during the first 6 months of the pandemic: people will get tired of the measures, when they get tired and don't follow them anymore it gets much worse. How to balance that is exactly all this political game going on, there is no simple solution when we talk about population levels of a nation.
Also in NY (upstate). I can recall my passport being checked only once or twice since the beginning of the pandemic. I assume you're referring to NYC?
Imagine seeing what's going on in eg Australia and still thinking this is about a virus!
One of the things I see "going on in Australia". Australia has had around 8 covid deaths per 100K population. Compared to, say, the United States with 237 covid deaths per 100K population. I see that and still think it's about a virus, yup.
In general over the past two years as a whole, people in Australia have lived with fewer restrictions or changes to everyday life than here in the US, with an order of magnitude fewer deaths. I still think it's about a virus, yup.
(I do not necessarily endorse international travel restrictions, including the ones the USA is enforcing, which seem to be pretty fruitless, and in some cases stricter than Australia's. I think they are mistaken. But it's about a virus, yup. Among other things, certainly US general xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment are involved in ours too. I too worry that we are imposing controls we will never see the end of, including related to border-crossing, which suits the agenda of some just fine. I'm sure it's about more than one thing in Australia too. Human things usually are. But it's about a virus, yup.).
Edit: if Omicron becomes a second 2020, I'd pay close attention to how Sweden reacts, given their recent experiences.
[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-covid-no-lockdown-str...
There are of course density, age, and other differences to consider.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deat...
Sweden's numbers are really good all things considered [1]
This defies intuition, we would expect a "no restrictions" policy to result in significantly worse outcomes. Maybe the take away is that a healthier population and a better healthcare system is a more significant factor than restrictions and mandates?
It’s also significantly better (x2-x4) than Israel by every excess death measure, where Israel locked down super seriously and vaccinated super quickly.
So you can’t conclude “it didn’t end well”
I think this one might be The One. Everyone will be immune soon, perhaps, one way or the other. But if Omicron and Delta compete, then it seems plausible that the existing vaccines would at least help a bit with the severity of symptoms.
Of course, once this happens, people will forget it ever happened and ignore the next warning signals.
> Dr ANGELIQUE COETZEE, the doctor who alerted the world to the Omicron Covid variant, says we are over-reacting to the threat
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10256373/Dr-ANGEL...
The first doctors seeing HIV cases in California without knowing what it was, yet alerting the medical community, were not the same people who brought us the current medication that controls it
Her position on the front lines is very important. But the decision on how dangerous the variant is should be given to those who specialize in just that (and would probably suck at diagnosing you with a stomach ulcer)
Threat level ORANGE!
most researchers i've heard on the topic only said "we will have to pay close attention to it", which sounds pretty reasonable from my uneducated perspective.
They say we are over-reacting because many places are doing more than paying attention to it, making policy decisions and instituting additional restrictions based on unproven fears about it, not just paying attention to it.
The South African scientists who discovered it don't have more authority on the topic than everyone else, but they have as much or more than many. They have more than, say, me. They probably have as much as most other scientists in the field, since they're on the ground with access to evidence, and for longer than anyone else.
By then it's too late. Obviously.
That's the problem with exponential growth. Not much seems to happen until suddenly it all happens at once, and the only chance to prevent that was a few weeks ago.
That's not how epidemiology or even science works. There are so many variables at play that a response in one region might not make sense in another region, and the same goes for the virus's behavior.
