GP certainly exaggerated by labelling the situation as minor inconvenience. It was a major upheaval to all our lives. There is no arguing though that curfews can and did help - at least where conducted properly and with support of the populace (there's little hope if people are not even trying to cooperate though); the first "lockdown" (it was called like that but actually there were only curfews here) in Germany comes to mind - things went only downhill here after the first partially re-opened summer when different states and politicians discovered the situation as a way to compete with each other.
This is hindsight though. In the beginning there was no reliable information on transmission vectors or infectiousness and the lack of tests, drugs, vaccines and treatments (even simple things like positioning patients prone to make breathing easier) or simply protection equipment left imo little choice than to treat the situation as severe as possible (better save than sorry).
All in all I think that most of it was unavoidable, although I absolutely agree that this was in every way a situation that was hard to deal with for all of us.
Curfews and other such measures had no effect and this is clear in the data. It's been looked at extensively and there's no correlation between severity of lockdown measures and outcomes.
It was clear lockdowns would end this way almost immediately. The diamond princess cruise ship proved that SARS-CoV-2 spread through aerosols, like a gas. It can spread through air ducts between locked rooms. The moment you accept that, the failure of lockdowns becomes entirely foreseeable. Nor was this unexpected. SARS-1 could spread the same way, as proven by outbreak investigations at the time.
And yes, there were people pointing this out in early 2020. The idea that nothing was known so the most extreme response possible was justified is:
1. Wrong
2. Illogical anyway! There are always unknowns, if you always overreact any time you're in s new situation we diagnose you with an anxiety disorder. It's not normal or healthy.
> There is no arguing though that curfews can and did help
I absolutely argue that they did not “help”. COVID is still here. Everybody will still get it at some point in their lives and it’s no less deadly than it was when the curfews started. They delayed some cases of COVID but did t prevent anything. At enormous cost, any way you measure it.
Omicron is certainly less deadly that the earlier variants, and the time gained with lockdowns allowed the population to get vaccinated, and gave hospitals time to build more ICUs. I think it's fair to say that these things are facts, not opinions!
The point was the delay of cases. During COVID many people died of preventable diseases or issues because COVID patients were siphoning our hospital and medical systems of resources. This man died of something that could've been prevented because hospitals were full and he couldn't get an ICU bed [1]. There are many more stories of this during the height of COVID of people dying from things that were low risk emergencies that became high risk ones because of hospitals being stressed.
In a situation where we did not have any lockdowns or curfews or measures in place, there would've been far more deaths because of limited hospital capacity being entirely consumed.
i would argue they did help. i have not gotten covid yet as far as I know. If and when I do, I guarantee I will be much happier to have gotten it when vaccines, treatments and therapeutics are improved compared to 3 years ago.
GP certainly exaggerated by labelling the situation as minor inconvenience. It was a major upheaval to all our lives. There is no arguing though that curfews can and did help - at least where conducted properly and with support of the populace (there's little hope if people are not even trying to cooperate though); the first "lockdown" (it was called like that but actually there were only curfews here) in Germany comes to mind - things went only downhill here after the first partially re-opened summer when different states and politicians discovered the situation as a way to compete with each other.
This is hindsight though. In the beginning there was no reliable information on transmission vectors or infectiousness and the lack of tests, drugs, vaccines and treatments (even simple things like positioning patients prone to make breathing easier) or simply protection equipment left imo little choice than to treat the situation as severe as possible (better save than sorry).
All in all I think that most of it was unavoidable, although I absolutely agree that this was in every way a situation that was hard to deal with for all of us.