"Why Lockdowns Don't Work and Hurt the Most Vulnerable"

[Shandi]

This is a long article, with clear references to massive damage (mental, physical, emotional, financial) done from lockdowns. This includes anxiety, depression, food insecurity, domestic violence, sexual abuse of children, suicide, children falling behind in school, small businesses closing, and a pervasive loss of hope, which leads to desperation.

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/12/30/lockdowns-do-not-work.aspx

[podfish]

"Why Lockdowns Don't Work and Hurt the Most Vulnerable"

what's "work"? this is a frustrating discussion because it's so scattershot. I hope you're not proposing that we just don't bother to deal with covid any differently than we do with the flu -- encourage people to take precautions, offer discounts on vaccines and make them more widely available. Or, are you? I think that's pretty close to Pamela's position - if you include that she seems to think if we all focused on living healthier lives, none of these things would be major issues. Which may be true, but it's not an experiment that this country will ever try.

Also, there's no clear definition of "lockdown" -- we're clearly not locked down, judging by how much casual spreading of covid is going on. Stores are open, the majority of services are being provided (especially if you aren't looking at it solely from a casual consumer's point of view, where restaurants and personal grooming services are disproportionately visible).

Sure, it would be best to have much more focused restrictions, and much much better behavior on the parts of those who are moving around the most. But that's not really practical, certainly not in the home of the free and unfettered.

So, what do you think would happen if we stopped any attempt at anything like a "lockdown"? Many people would still avoid normal businesses, out of fear. Rumors would spread about businesses or schools where several cases happened, and people would shun them in particular. Medical practices, much as they're maligned on this site, still matter to many people. If no 'shutdown' led to any more spread of disease, they would lose enough workers so they'd be unable to function.

The idea that we could avoid economic and emotional distress by avoiding 'shutdowns' is a fantasy. We certainly could do a lot better if our society behaved more like some of the less reckless places on earth, like New Zealand - not Norway; that experiment's been aborted if you haven't been paying attention.