There is still considerable debate if those measures were actually effective. Did closing down entire industries, closing borders, making 20 year olds WFH etc really move the needle on Covid deaths in retrospect?
And even if it did, was it ethical, fair and is it a reasonable price to damage the economy and life prospects of hundreds of millions of young people who weren’t at statistical risk?
Its important because it means the current and future mess is down to bad science and politics and not an act of god.
The measures were certainly very effective under the metric of limiting deaths.
British Columbia and New Zealand have about the same population, both are rich jurisdictions. BC was relatively open (compared to other Canadian provinces) while NZ was more locked down. BC has dramatically more deaths than NZ.
And then if you compare BC, which was more locked down than various US states, BC had less deaths than them.
It seems pretty clear to me that the "lock downs" worked.
(putting "lockdowns" in scare quotes here because really the only thing BCians were prevented from doing was going to restaurants and bars. You could still go to the grocery store and home depot etc with a mask on)
If you have some other metric well I dunno, but I don't think there's any better metric than deaths avoided.
> There is still considerable debate if those measures were actually effective.
Not really. I agree with the thrust of your post but there is definitely no considerable debate being had on this topic, because Near-Zero COVID is the only acceptable policy, and saving lives at any cost along with it.
Not sure what you mean here. In the U.S. there has been considerable debate, vaccines are free, safe and available same day. Finally we have given up on almost all safety measures as long as the healthcare system can handle the load.
Can you be specific in the change you want or which debate isn’t allowed?
And even if it did, was it ethical, fair and is it a reasonable price to damage the economy and life prospects of hundreds of millions of young people who weren’t at statistical risk?
Its important because it means the current and future mess is down to bad science and politics and not an act of god.