Originally Posted by
Common Soldier
True, but a complete lockdown is pretty drastic, and my point is that most of the people could havs already been exposed and infected even before the lockdown was implemented, given that coronavirus has a long period before the first symptoms showed up, in which case the lockdowns are extracting a very high economic cost with little health gain. Is a total closure of museums really doing much to stem thr coronavirus? I don't know.
Texas for one, Florida for another. Texas has a lot fewer cases despite no state wide lockdown that Michigan has. And the rate of new cases in Texas is far less than Michigan, despite Michgan having a statewide lockdown. Texas today has far more coronavirus cases than Michigan had when Michigsn began its lockdown, yet still isn't seeing the growth in coronavirus as rapid as Michigan. Maybe Texas will become worse than Michigan, but so far it hasn't happened, and if it doesn't, then it suggest these lockdowns are not working.
Nobody is going to issue a total lockdown before a single case showed up, so saying that guidelines were followed is unrealistic. Exactly how many cases did there need to be befoes you go into total lockdown? How many cases do there need to be to implement a total lockdown? And the guideline of "before it becomes widespread in the public" is just too vague. Unless yountest the entire public, and right now there isn't the capacity, how can you tell if the virus has or has not become widespread in the public?
You are advocating a total lockdown policy, that has enormous economic and social cost, without any real scientific evidence to back it up.
As I have said, for all we know by the timethe very first symptom appeared in the US the virus might have already become so widespread the lockdowns were ineffective.
You are advocating total lockdown were people are confined to their homes withot showing an real evidence that even the rather drastic lockdowns we have are doing anything to slow the virus. I have never seen all the schools restarants, libraries and stores shutdown the way they are, and yet it hasn't seem to slow the spread of coronavirus. Almost the reverse. The coronavirus spread more rapidly after the lockdowns than before. If you lockdown people into an apartment building where some people have the coronavirus, it seems to me that you pretty much guarantee all those people are gong to get the virus. Flu seasons occurs duirng times when people are spending more time indoors precisely because people are spending more time doors. And since these lockdowns are forcing people ro spend more tine indoors, you could end up spreading the virus more than without the lockdowns.
And it is admitted these lockdowns are designed merely to flatten the curve, which lengthens the time of the pandemic. If you could lock people in their homes for an entire month or more, and let no one out, and quaratine all infected areas, so no travel in or out of New York, it might work, but I just don't see it very feasible. Bad as the coronavirus is, it is not the Black Death, the death rates are not that high, and actng as if it were is likely to make matters worse. People.are willing to put up with unprecedented levels of shutdown, but if you start treating the coronavirus as worse than the Black Death, people are likely to balk.