Lockdowns do not eliminate Covid-19: UK, California, New York, France, hell even Japan. Also pretty much the entirety of pre-Covid epidemiological science.
Lack of lockdowns does not lead to mass death: Sweden, Florida, South Dakota, vast portions of the Global South.
California effectively did not lock down; both state and county public health orders Constitutionally rely on enforcement by county sheriffs, most of whom did not (and many of whom very publicly announced they would not) enforce the (therefore, purely notional) orders.
Of course, never a true Scotsman nor a true lockdown. The worst spread and the highest seroprevalence are all in California's urban areas which locked down most stringently.
> The worst spread and the highest seroprevalence are all in California’s urban areas which locked down most stringently.
LA, Sacramento, and every Bay Area County Sheriff publicly announced a focus on “education and voluntary compliance”; virtually all the urban Southern California Sheriffs aside from LA County publicly annouced outright non-enforcement policies (some asserting that the orders were unconstitutional), as did the Sheriffs the counties with the major San Joaquin County cities.
The “most stringent lockdowns” weren’t anything like lockdowns.
Aside from the components that were directly within state or other non-sheriff’s authority to enforce (like the alcohol service components which could be enforced directly by state Alcoholic Beverage Control), there was no enforced lockdown essentially anywhere in the State, and this was publicly announced and widely reported in the media, so people were aware of the nonenforcement.
Minor late correction: “San Joaquin County” should have been “San Joaquin Valley”. (Or, since Sacramento was addressed elsewhere, it could have been in broader context “counties with the other significant Central Valley cities.”)
I guess it depends on your definition of "mass deaths"
The US has 500k deaths so far, I consider that pretty massive.
Lockdown _did_ eliminate covid in New Zealand, so there are examples both ways.
It's pretty clear that there's a spectrum of lockdowns and their effectiveness. Personally I would rather you all stayed home for 2 weeks rather than sacrifice my grandparents for the economy.
The lockdowns in much of the western world were pretty weak overall. So many caveats and exceptions. It was "lockdown except for that which is _too_ inconvenient for my voting base"
The lockdowns didn't help your grandparents at all, all they did was destroy the lives of many young people and business owners, and plunge over a hundred million people worldwide into extreme poverty: https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-health-ap-top-news-addi....
> Personally I would rather you all stayed home for 2 weeks rather than sacrifice my grandparents for the economy.
If you think the life of your grandparents is worth more than a hundred million people in poor countries being able to put food on their table, you're incredibly selfish.
The US didn't have a lockdown and the economy wasn't ruined by shelter in place. It was ruined because nobody wants to go to a restaurant if they might get sick - this would've happened even without public health restrictions.
Luckily, CARES aid was so effective it actually reduced poverty.
None of those places had lockdowns of the style Italy did.
Travel restrictions are working for AU/NZ/Japan/Korea along with restricting indoor gatherings when necessary. They didn't work for NYC because they didn't restrict European travel.
Lack of lockdowns does not lead to mass death: Sweden, Florida, South Dakota, vast portions of the Global South.