IMO, the reason case counts are important now is because the longer this things hangs around, the more opportunity for it to mutate and turn into something the vaccinations are less effective against. It seems like we are seeing that a bit already, with a new variant hitting teens much harder. As the most vulnerable are protected it wouldn’t be shocking if less vulnerable become more vulnerable through mutations.
To that point, it is why vaccinations on a global scale are also important. The longer it hangs out anywhere, the more risk there is to all of us.
This is where the anti-vax folks are a problem. Not everything is about me me me, but we’ve lost that as a society. Unless your doctor says you shouldn’t get the vaccine you should do best by your neighbor and get vaccinated.
The challenge is for the younger folks the unknown long term impacts of the vaccine. Yes it isn’t me me me but it is also me. You want me to inject something to protect me from something that poses very low risk to me at the moment while not knowing the long term impact. That’s a tough sell IMO. If I was 20 I wouldn’t get it.
When we were 20 we probably took bigger health risks than these shots, but I agree that if I was 20 I don’t know if I’d be at the front of the line to take it either.
I think case counts are important just shouldn’t have been the focal point that they have been. As a guide post sure but keeping hospitals under capacity IMO was far more important. I think society did this ok just didn’t adjust quick enough to new data points. Of course as stated above I think the federal government should have taken a stronger role at the start. More than anything it just feels like as a society we put the protection of the few at a premium decimating jobs and businesses when we had other options. If the death rate had stayed what we were initially told I’d absolutely feel differently.
I agree. Case counts were the wrong measure. Lack of federal leadership exacerbated the issue. Shut down at first was understandable but we had enough data 3-4 months in to understand who was the most vulnerable. As you say, there was no need to sacrifice the economy, schools and the mental health of all at that point. Adjust policy.
If you don’t think the lockdowns helped us avoid catastrophe, then I don’t know what to tell you. With the way this virus spreads, allowing younger people to continue business as usual would have been even more disastrous. Look at the death rate in NYC early in the pandemic (where several weeks had mortality greater than 9/11 every 3 days), now imagine several times that nationwide if we hadn’t shutdown early on. At that time, hospitals still didn’t know how to treat it, nobody had enough masks of any kind including health care workers, and we didn’t know for sure how the virus mostly spread.
It also ignores the fact that we simply can’t isolate many older people in our society. A large proportion of the elderly live in the same house with their younger family (around 20% or so), are critical care givers for kids (otherwise parents can’t go to work), are cared for by younger relatives, or still work with younger people around and can’t just work from home. How do you protect those folks in a matter of days to weeks to enable other people to follow business as usual? Sure, life is dangerous, but are we willing to put up with a significantly higher level of serious illness and death associated with this virus to avoid shutdowns?
I didn’t say we shouldn’t have lockdown. When we did it made sense. I only said that as we learned more about the virus, how it was transmitted and the risks associated both death and serious health impacts we should have adjusted public policy quicker. Kids could have been in school, especially elementary. Gyms could have been open, etc and put protection on on individuals. We needed to keep the capacity limits, the virtual options, the masks, etc - just think we could have balanced things a bit better and helped some businesses stay open and helped some folks keep their jobs.
I get your point, and we’ll never know how different the number would have been if we didn’t lockdown, but I’m going to venture to guess more americans also died from Pneumonia than did in WW1, WW2 and Korean war.
I’m not anti-mask or anti-lockdown, but there’s no denying this pandemic was/is politicized.
I hate this comparison number. The number of deaths in WWs and Korea etc, were young kids who had no business dying at such an age. The majority of COVID deaths are older folks and many folks who already had at least one health issue if not 2 or 3. How many of our covid deaths were people that would have died of something in this same window? I have a friend, his mom died of COVID, she was also a very sick person in a nursing home. They didn’t expect her to die of COVID, but they expected her to pass this year. That isn’t to lessen the deaths we have had but I think we need to put the data in perspective. Many of the folks we have lost would have died in this window anyway.
I do hope this pandemic has convinced some folks to go get in shape. It is clear the #1 thing you could do to fight this thing is be healthy. It sure wasnt a guarantee that you wouldn’t get seriously sick but it was a huge line of defense. The idea that everyone can be comfortable in your own skin and you can be obese and it’s ok is a terrible message. It aggravated me to no end when I saw a a massively overweight lady yell at a guy for not wearing a mask. She yelled at him if she got sick and died it was his fault. I wanted to say well yeah he should be wearing a mask but if you die its cuz you ate too many swiss cake rolls.
So looking at the “Worldometers” numbers I noticed that Sweden (who did not lockdown) has a lower number of deaths per million population than we do. My suspicion is that in years to come we will find out that some of the things we did were more harmful than helpful. We did the best we knew how at the time but it has become somewhat politicized and in some instances it appears to be a blatant power grab. Questioning some of the steps taken has been warranted.
I work for a Swedish company, so I’ve been there 30+ times at this point. One thing I would consider regarding deaths per million w/ Sweden - Their people are significantly more healthy than we are. Most deaths in the US have involved comorbidities that Swedes do not have as big a problem with. Obesity is not an issue in Sweden. Diabetes is not an issue in Sweden. Their overall “heart health” is much better than ours. If I had to pick a country that could manage without lockdowns, I’d take Sweden over just about anywhere honestly.
No doubt what you state is true, but that is not why they chose to not lockdown. At the time Sweden made their decision it was unknown who would be more greatly affected by CoVid-19. CoVid could have very well affected the young adults instead of older adults with co-morbidities. It appears that they made their decision in an effort to not ruin their economy. It also appears that their decision was the correct one from what the numbers say. Time will ultimately tell us, though.
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