Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Being the richest country on earth and also the one with the worst virus situation can also lead to cognitive dissonance for many people. Envy of other places that are handling the situation better is another thing that can lead people to despair. As is having no leader or leadership, no direction, no goal, no plan, and no idea of what the future will bring.
It's a nationwide disaster that people are simply not ready to deal with. Many people here have no idea what suffering is and therefore, they don't know how to suffer or how to get through such times. Suffering is externalized onto minorities and other unwanted people in society so that the well off don't have to deal with it. Now everyone's suffering and many simply can't cope with the suffering or with the additional suffering. Many resort to childish behaviors like refusing to wear masks or social distance to make themselves feel better by hurting others. A lot of people simply never grew up and now that suffering is inevitable, feel like they should be getting an exemption.
It has some of the most cases, sure, if you compare it by population though, it's still high, but it's not horrible. The US is #12 for cases per capita, most European countries are between 4,000-6,000 cases per capita, while the US is at 8,500, which is definitely more. But fewer people die per capita than in the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Italy, and some other minor countries.
It isn't like the US has orders of magnitude more infections per capita, and there's more people dying per capita in many other major countries. In such countries you'd have about the same chance of catching the virus, and a greater change of dying, as in the US.
The majority of people that are refusing to wear masks are doing so because they believe the science/data supports that decision. You might disagree with that, and whether the science/data actually supports it is a different discussion, but they aren't just being "childish" and refusing to follow recommendations for no reason.
I think there's obviously political power to gain in making the situation look as bad as possible, so that a group can then use that as a foothold to advance their own political policies. It's unfortunate that the issue is so political already. But you can easily tell when it's happening when people are referring to "society failing" and needing to "reshape society" and saying how horrible it is in the US when it really isn't that bad, etc. You can't advance new politics without a narrative of the old way of things being bad.
I guess you can easily argue that there's political power for me to downplay the situation and make it look as good as possible, in order to prevent new politics from advancing. And that's true. But it's good to at least share both sides of the story.
> But fewer people die per capita than in the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Italy, and some other minor countries.
You listed the countries with more deaths per capita. Excluding countries with < 10,000 cases, there are 6. The 5 you mentioned, plus Belgium.
That means every other country in the world has fewer deaths per capita. The US is the 7th worst out of 66 countries. You can say that you're satisfied with that standing, but you can't say we're doing well.
Disappointment with that metric may greatly overlap with partisan disappointment in the current administration. But Occam's razor suggests the former does not require the latter.
That's beyond absurd. There isn't a single shred of evidence in support of not wearing masks helping the pandemic and quite a lot of evidence to the contrary. Not only that, but common sense says that putting a barrier between your mouth / nose and infectious particles and thereby stopping some of them from entering your body can reduce the chances of one getting sick by lowering the amount of viral particles entering the body. People knew this in 1918. Now we have science to back this up and have had it for over a hundred years. It is complete idiocy to suggest that science doesn't support mask wearing.
While I don't think all of people that are overdosing are "addicts" per se, I know many non-addicts that don't deal well with life that great. Sure, they're fine when everything is going pretty well, but they fall down when the going gets tough.
I feel for people. I've never felt despair or shame like I did when I hit bottom.
Much luck and love to everyone out there. Life gets difficult, and sometimes it gets really, really difficult. Lean on people if you can, anyone that you can. Find a community if you can, online or not.
I know this advice rings hollow when people are worried about putting food on the table or keeping a roof over their head or just trying to stay safe. But you can do this. Don't worry about thriving, just survive.
Sorry, for the rambling, this just really hit home.
The 3 dimensions of sobriety are about BODY, MIND, and SPIRIT.
A) PHYSICAL SOBRIETY
1. Go to AA/12-step meetings daily. 90 meetings in 90 days is a great first start. It's easy, free, all you have to do is show up. Get a sponsor, work the steps. It's the largest community of people who all never wanted to be there either.
2. EXERCISE! Can't stress this enough. Nature's free & sober fountain of endorphins. Aim for 3x/week+. Invest in a trainer at the beginning to help with motivation. Probably one of my most valued practices, critical for my sobriety.
B) MENTAL SOBRIETY
1. Therapy - 12 step meetings / groups are great, but it really works well when combined with an individual therapist. You realize there are loops of thought in your mind that can fester into relapses, and finding out how to articulate these feelings to a professional allows you to snip them.
2. Work - Start slowly, don't jump back into a career that's too demanding or stressful, but I found it important to be intellectually stimulated and constructive with my time.
C) SPIRITUAL SOBRIETY
1. Meditate! I strongly recommend Vipassana-style meditation. There are free, donation-based 10-day programs that are intense, but immersive.
2. Volunteer. Giving back to the community lightens your soul and spirit. Helping others helps you appreciate all the beauty in your own life.
Feel free to try any of the practices above or discover your own!
The communists and the facists types are both radicalizing around anti-government sentiment more than anything and we've seen real lives lost as a result.
I hope things get better but everything is increasing in polarization at a time when people have a lot of free time and a country being consumed by an out of control virus that has been politicized.
It's a recipe for disaster.
The danger, the reason I point this out, is that when people see too much of it on the internet they start to lose faith in humanity, and they start projecting that world view on to the face to face interactions.
These are hard times, for all of us.
My background: grew up in the USA, with typical public school education. When I was a kid in school, we (briefly) covered times like the protests against the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Suffrage, and such. But it all seemed distant to me back then. I knew, at an academic level, that the people fighting for change had a hard time... but we (as a nation) got through it, and made things better (well, maybe not really, but that's another discussion).
We are living through history, right here, right now. I can now see it from the other side. I can see a little more clearly what those people in the history books were going through. I now don't have the benefit of reading in a book that it all worked out in the end (that women got the vote, that civil rights laws were passed, etc.).
It may seem like it will never get any better. That the struggle for a brighter, better future for everyone is futile. That hate and stupidity will drag down this country, and that we'll never recover.
Do we all have the courage to continue on? In the face of unfairness and injustice? What will the history books say about us 50 years from now?
One never knows when one sets out to be a hero what the end result will be.
What about when we try to fit those archetypes over a reality that is inappropriately matched to them? What about when we seek out grievances where there are none just because they have a hint of resembling the past?
The past shapes the present in this way.
Drug overdose deaths in BC in May eclipsed covid 19 deaths for the entire year. You'd think people would be a bit more concerned about drug overdoses and willing to listen to the provincial health officer and follow her recommendations.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/overdose-dea...
Granted I personally believe drugs should be at least decriminalized but I'm well aware that there will be a cost and people have a right to be opposed.
If the last few months have taught me anything, it's that the average person really isn't capable of avoiding decisions that harm themselves and those around them with any consistency. Obviously we already have laws for murder and such but drugs also as it happens have a [lesser] external cost.
My prediction is that America seems unable/unwilling to do what's required to stem covid (lack of federal leadership is just horrific here), and as such, America will chose money over lives. It always has. And at that point, sucks to be you if you got covid and die from it -- it'll just be like any other death in America.... largely ignored as a collective.
I think this is incredibly true. And it is spreading to other parts of the world.
There is a lot of sensationalism, around black lives matter protests, and very little objective analysis of the "problem". It seems incredibly irresponsible considering the results.
I would urge everyone to listen to (or read) what Sam Harris says in his podcast on the topic, he brings some objectivity and rationality back to the discussion. You feel like there is still some sanity left in the world after listening to it.
Many of these overdoses surely are suicides.
Depression, Drugs overdose, murder (despair), Suicide, extra sedentary issues leading to diabetese/CVD, loss of jobs/meaning et al.
I havent seen anyone do the math of the uptick there to talk about the marginal benefit of lockdown or the fact that this, once again, is a form of biased benefit for the elderly at the expense of the younger (elderly more likely to die, younger more likely to suffer harder from lockdown)
Regardless, if there was no lockdown, and medical systems were overwhelmed, like in New York, would you have been able to see your doctor then? Would you have wanted to go to an overcrowded ER or Urgent Care and wait for hours surrounded by infected patients?
I suspect the waiting room issue could be solved by queuing people up electronically and texting when they're ready to see you, while you wait in the car outside, to minimize exposure to other sick patients.
Also your electronic solution sounds like it'd take months to implement. Why didn't you code it up and offer it to your doctor's office?
Maybe something like domestic violence/abuse cases could be more job/school lockdown related
I'm from Australia - where while we've had some grumblings about the health measures, on the whole, we've been pretty lucky. Our death toll is 104 people - which even though (comparative) low is still a tragedy.
Yet the USA death toll is over 130,000 people - that is a terrible thing =(. I do not get how the USA can be so blase about it.
And that is with measures in place (although I'm sure there are breaches). Imagine if you simply let it run rampant, and let the health system get overhwelmed? (See Italy).
It does seem like its overwhelming the young who are very laid back about COVID-19, and chaff the most at restrictions.
To be frank - that seems very selfish.
Imagine if the virus had a 30% mortality rate in your cohort? You'd be terrified.
(I'm young, with two young kids under 5. My parents refused to see me or our kids for a couple of months, out of fear they might catch it from us - I missed them as did their grandkids, but I understand why - it must have been scary for them).
And even that aside - have you considered that a lot of the economic downturn isn't from the actual health measures in place - but from the uncertainty, doubt and fear caused by a virus pandemic? People are scared, and that's naturally going to curb some spending. We are a interlinked global economy, and you cannot escape that.
I hope that we'll have a vaccine soon, so we can go back to normal - but in lieu of that, trying to stamp out the virus or contain it isn't a bad goal.
No, it seems logical: if the elderly are at risk, by all means, let them shelter at home and give them money without destroying the economy (as the elderly as less likely to be employed).
Even better, for old people who need to work, give them full pay every week, and just ask them in return to stay at home and use uber eats.
But we didn't do that. Too bad: it would still have saved a lot of money (and the actual economy)
> I hope that we'll have a vaccine soon
I will be generous enough to not claim my dose, to let you and others test it first, to make sure there are no autoimmune diseases or other bad things it can trigger
https://txdshs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#...
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/
Because on a per capita basis the US actually has fewer deaths per million than multiple European countries? Ask yourself how e.g. Belgians can be so blasé about this, they’re doing worse than us in this regard!
Or maybe it’s because deaths have dropped dramatically from their peak and continue to do so?
Or maybe it’s because tens of thousands of people die every year of the flu in each and every western country and to the US, 130K Covid deaths is like 3 or 4 years worth of flu deaths, which no one really cares about?
This is not the Black Death. People don’t care about it because it’s still exceedingly rare to die of it, that’s basically all there is to it.
That's one way to put it. Another is it's already more American deaths than total in WWI in just a handful of months and we're not over the biggest hump yet.
The death of a young male in his prime is not the same as the death of an elderly person whose 3 year survival rate was already less than 25% (made-up numbers for the sake of illustration, not accurate).
So relatively speaking WW1 was much more devastating.
This is why government are engaging in stimulus spending, or increasing their social support programs.
This is why they exist.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/pandemic-could-mean-260-mi...
They go even further to say that it’s not so much money that’s the concern right now — it’s the supply chain.
Critical, essential services aren’t being shutdown with lockdowns. They’re being shutdown because people are getting sick — like the food processing plants in the US, where people work in very close proximity to each other, indoors, all day long.
We are in lockdown because of the pandemic. Half the people don’t care, the other half don’t want to get it - the economy is affected until those percentages budge
A direct response to the global covid pandemic
> The pandemic is one factor that lead to the lockdown, but by itself it wasn't a sufficient condition; it was a free choice by politicians.
Do you think there was another reason for the lockdown besides slowing down infections?
And, it's quite obvious from the reality on the ground right now, as I said a month ago when it was becoming obvious, that pandemic by itself would have basically no effect on the economy.
1) Most working age people face very low risks. Shutting down plants because someone there got covid makes about 5-10 times more sense than shutting down plants because someone got the flu, but 5-10 times of almost 0 is still almost 0.
2) Even with constant fear mongering in the media and from the govt, people do not care. I've gone to sit down restaurants 4 times in the last couple weeks. 20 minute wait, we left to another almost full one; almost full; 60 minute wait and we left to get takeout; 20 minute wait. They are overflowing. Local tourist town was extremely crowded last weekend. Parks are crowded. There are traffic jams on the road going to/from the mountains (Hwy 2, WA state). The demand would totally be there if it were not for the lockdowns.
We had a pretty bad flu season a couple of years ago, but no lockdown and no economic downturn. Covid is worse than flu, but not orders of magnitude worse.
https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...
The movie theater is on fire — how long can you keep it open? Keeping it open means it’s harder to keep the fire under control — and you risk the theater burning down completely. And how many people are going to want to keep going to a smoke filled theater? “Don’t worry, it’s only a risk for the people in the cheap seats.”
As far as the flu, this pandemic has revealed how cavalier we are about it. It is, as you say, an almost yearly strain on our system. So, for one, we’re adding an even bigger strain on top of an already big strain. Second, this is a novel virus — inherently there’s a lot more risk. There’s a lot we don’t understand, including whether there’s lingering conditions for otherwise young and healthy people.
And yet the USA will both have their cake and eat it too. You get both the full brunt of the virus alongside economic collapse.
Instead of discussing the very real results of a demand collapse and how to address that, we get borderline eugenics posts attempting to throw more meat back into the grinder. Its all so incredibly abstract, these lives you want to sacrifice at your local Applebee's. But, hey, you're just worried about the long-term results--you're the caring one here. Those of us who want lockdown, were the ones causing the harm. Not the lack of a safety net, not the collapse of consensus, not the completely incompetent response, and never the fact that the copper has been so thoroughly stripped from the global supply chains that you couldn't even get enough masks into the country with a several months headstart.
The second problem is that the consequences that we're seeing in the USA aren't exactly the "consequences of a lockdown", they're the consequences of a half-ass lockdown that didn't decrease the numbers like they did in other countries. Both because of non-compliance of people and state/local government, and because of a broken healthcare system. You can't really blame that on the lockdown.
https://www.justfacts.com/news_covid-19_anxiety_lockdowns_li...
http://www.vch.ca/public-health/harm-reduction/overdose-prev...
There's not a whole lotta point, since everything has Fentanyl in it these days, except pot (probably)
And free Naloxone (Narcan) kits at Shopper's Drug Mart, London Drugs, and other places:
https://towardtheheart.com/site-finder
They only ask your age and whether this is your first kit. No ID required
There were 131 overdose calls in Vancouver yesterday
I know Vancouver setup a legal opioid vending machine as a test run. Doctor checks you out, prescribes a legal opioid (hydromorphone in this case). You scan your badge and your dose pops out.
No more stealing, prostituing, robbing, or other “hustle”. You just take your dose. Much lower risk of overdose and far fewer complications from shooting street drugs.
I’ve read about addicts in these types of programs and suddenly they don’t have to hustle for 12 hours a day. They can get a job. Or, they just have the time to stop and think about their life and what direction they want it to go in.
Not claiming it’s a panacea at all. But it’s better than the situation we’re in now.
A big part of the potency of recreational drugs is due to its illegality forcing suppliers to pack as much of a punch in the smallest package. Another contributing factor is Western culture - you don’t see a huge demand for low potency cannabis. People like their drugs strong.
When you come back, use this new state of mind to change your routine before you settle back into the state you were in before you left.
Loneliness can hit you hard, very hard. And on top of that if you have any addiction and mental health problems...
Depression causes more lost life years than cancer, AIDs, and war combined (without even accounting for how depression can cause things like alcoholism and heart disease) (source: The Noonday Demon). So it's not unreasonable to guess that the increased anxiety and depression from quarantining could be much more detrimental in terms of years lost in aggregate.
For a personal anecdote, my grandfather who was in a nursing home died during the pandemic. It wasn't from covid-19 but I certainly think the quarantine accelerated his death (and prevented any family members from seeing him in his last days even after trying desperately).
I know it's easy for someone young like me to say this, not being in much personal danger from exposure. Also, I do think we were rational to lock down early on when we didn't know much about the virus. But I do think we need to really attempt to quantify the indirect damages of quarantining vs not at this point. We may find that the morals of the American left don't match the reality.
March 23: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/23/why-americans-...
>Suspected overdoses nationally jumped 18 percent in March, 29 percent in April and 42 percent in May, data from ambulance teams, hospitals and police shows.
I was stating a fact that all this was already being reported on before quarantine and added a link with a date for more context. The lion thinks everyone is like him.
Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest, most straightforward, and the least innovative ones: voting in policymakers who craft empathetic public policy, donating to charity, being there for a friend.
Hope you all are doing well :)
Another thing that can help with depression is exercise. But it's difficult to exercise while depressed. If you can somehow build an app that tricks people into exercising (like Pokémon Go "tricked" people into going outside) then that could help too.
It's not as weird as it sounds.
Is it ever?
Let Apple and Google churn out that stuff. Let the rest of us sell shovels for $180k/yr to tech company founders. Or $500k/yr to Apple and Google.
Surely a react app is the only thing in the way between global peace and happiness and harmony, let's just make a nice webpage and raise hundreds of millions of dollars for it :)
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
This gets extraordinarily complicated because many political groups refuse to empathize with anyone who doesn't have the same life experience as themselves.
> Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest...
I agreed with your reasoning and logic but not your conclusion.
And while I'm a proponent of UBI, and to an extent Andrew Yang's platform, simply voting someone in doesn't solve the many pitfalls of the Human Condition. Which includes, but is not limited to, finding value and self-wroth from one's achievements and work in Society and in Daily Life.
Nothing stops you from going and planting a community garden, or if that's not available in your area guerilla gardening, or volunteering in several capacities. Even taking up hobbies you may have put off is a very good use of time. Or launching a side gig that can teach you new skills in a otherwise neglected facet of your Life.
I personally went back to school in Jan as a plan B to my pursuit to go to SpaceX, as I have been out of Supply Chain since 2017 when I left BMW and VW, and that has kept me pretty engaged. On top of that I also have neglected off-road project I needed to do some much needed maintenance on after driving through the 3ft+ of snow, so while my normal social-life has completely gone away (and I feel it, although they did temporarily open the clubs last week for 2 nights, only to re-close this weeks events) I'm still pretty engaged with my old team as well as have school and cars to keep me engaged--honestly, this feels too much like HS for my taste.
In short: Public Policy can and should address many things, like de-funding and de-militarizing the police to focus on community outreach, but it cannot overcome the many perils of being Human. We need to feel engaged in our Community and within ourselves, and I think very few people have adjusted to that well, as most of Civilization has been built on overcoming the (in)convenience of Life and left very little room for self-reflection.
Sidenote: I've been chef for the past years after leaving Tech, and the way restaurants operate now is completely odd and not at all appealing to me for in-room dining; I went with some friends and it's not at all pleasant, and they let us take off our masks at the table/bar area we were sat at. I don't foresee myself going on dinner dates at a resteraunt anytime soon. Its good for a take out deal and walk somewhere or go home, but I can cook, so the ambiance is really the only thing I pay for.
> That's a hilarious sort of tech delusion that people make fun of
Honestly, that seemed like something Mike Judge wrote if we had a new season of COVID based Silicon Valley, I can see the main character pitching something like:
Pied Piper now has a mood optimizer attached to your VR headset and relies on real-time data acquisition gathered from your fitbit to adjust the visuals to fit your Lifestyle!
I'm glad I left the Valley when I did. The collective mind-set there is not just delusional, its outright absurd and perhaps even dangerous. Having so many people unable to do even basic tasks outside of their controlled environment/World is a disaster waiting to happen.
Honestly, I'm looking forward to the crazy twisted things coming out of Charlie Brooker's head right now for Black Mirror. I have a fan-art script I have been working on/off for years that probably would go really well in this social distancing era as it was about the emergence of people like this, and oddly enough I started writing it only months before this article came out in 2014:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/eating-in-front-of-webcam-sou...
"Because their wings are clipped."
Not directly applicable, but thinking you can just provide job training or an app or whatever and solve this problem is incredibly naive.
Edit: all the people downvoting me, why? not a single comment
seriously, this isn't a theory, it's just the facts
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-pandemic-opioid-addict...
Which raises the question would a basic income cause more misery for the general masses?
I’m glad I’ve escaped that hellacious ride (for now)
If Trudeau says 'he will take care of Canadians', how can anyone argue against that? He's a hero, he's sending out $2000 to anyone with a social insurance number, based on the honour system. In practice, people began gaming it from day one, started groups telling each other how to game it, and soon the disconnect between CERB applicants and actual newly unemployed was in the millions.
If you pass a policy that gets money in to the hands of Canadians, great, however, surely there should be some restrictions for those who can't handle any sort of money over $100 for their own health. Give a hard addict more than $100, and in a night they'll overdose. Give them, people skirting the line with full blown addiction, $2000, along with a border shutdown limiting supply and you have a recipe for a drug crisis.
Unintended consequences are important to acknowledge too, and this I think is too hard to talk about, because how can you argue with someone who is just trying to take care of Canadians?
A side effect of covid19 is that drugs have become more scarce and expensive due to the border shutdown. This may be having an impact.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-pandemic-opioid-addict...
Wait, less drugs, more overdoses... what?
Depression causes more lost life years than cancer, AIDs, and war combined (without even accounting for how depression can cause things like alcoholism and heart disease) (source: The Noonday Demon). So it's not unreasonable to guess that the increased anxiety and depression from quarantining could be much more detrimental in terms of years lost in aggregate.
For a personal anecdote, my grandfather who was in a nursing home died during the pandemic. It wasn't from covid-19 but I certainly think the quarantine accelerated his death (and prevented any family members from seeing him in his last days even after trying desperately).
I know it's easy for someone young like me to say this, not being in much personal danger from exposure. But I do think we need to really look at indirect damages of quarantining. We may find that the American left has had the morals of this situation all wrong.
Source: my sources.
> Hong Kong, with 7.5 million residents, is one of the most densely populated places on earth, but recorded only six deaths from Covid-19 despite having no lockdown and receiving nearly 350,000,travelers a day from abroad until authorities started reducing cross-border travel on January 30.
> The key secret of Hong Kong’s success, Prof. Yuen said, is that the mask compliance rate during morning rush hour is 97%. The 3% who don’t comply are mainly Americans and Europeans, he said.
...
> The Czech Republic was the first European country to impose mandatory mask-wearing in some public spaces on March 18, before it recorded the first death by Covid-19. It has since reduced the number of daily new infections to below 50 and has one of the lowest coronavirus death rates in the world.
[1] https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/01/coronavirus-texas-ho...
There may or may not be an increase of cases when the economy opens. While the former is more likely the latter is not out of the question, depending on whether the community will take precautions like wearing masks.
However, if the economy stays closed, without a doubt, many lives will be negatively affected.
Why did you ignore the line right after the statement you quoted? What we've seen over and over in each wave of the coronavirus is that the deaths lag behind the number of cases by a few weeks [1]. What you're arguing for is irrational and against the facts of the situation because the reason why we've seen an increase in cases is because our state opened up too early and too recklessly!
How can you honestly argue that there won't be an increase of cases when the economy opens when we're facing down exactly that situation?
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-deaths-can-still...
Why is it harmful to the economic prospects of people? Our economy literally relies on consumption. High rates of consumption.
> The free money will be paid for in the years to come and it will be a long lasting burden.
First thing: I reject the notion of "free money." It is money that is borrowed by people at time of crisis. Government works for the people, in theory, so it is the people borrowing the money from their descendants in order to weather a storm today without having a complete collapse.
Secondly literally everything in our economy runs on debt. The idea is you outgrow your debt. If you want to have the whole "abolishing capitalism" conversation, that's a big suggestion to say the least, but the two ideas you're suggesting are either criminal or history defining:
1.) Just let all the poors die
2.) We have nothing to lose but our chains
> But if not, the future looks painful.
Were a sovereign nation we can literally just write it off.
The debt can be written off. But it will have consequences. It means no more living on debt, because no lender will be willing to lend anymore. It will be very bad for the economy, at least in the short term (who knows how many years). However, it may lead to a more sound economy in the long term, assuming the capitalism survives.
China had a brutal lockdown early and thanks to that they are now largely back in business. Anti-lockdown sentiment early on is precisely the reason the US has had to prolong its suffering. The reason long lockdowns are happening is because we can’t muster strict.
Wait, that doesn't make sense - are you saying that they locked down long enough that everybody who had the virus "lost it" (either by getting healthy or dying)? That doesn't sound very plausible given what we know about epidemiology. The lockdown was sold here as a way to "flatten the curve": everybody who would have gotten it will still get it, but not all at once, so the hospitals won't be overwhelmed. Is anybody claiming that China's lockdown actually eradicated the virus within its borders entirely?
The lockdown was intended to do two things, not one:
1. What you say, reduce the rate of spread. The popular "flatten the curve" thing, which, when grossly simplified, suggests that if 1 million people were going to get it it was inevitable, but we could spread it out over months instead of weeks.
2. Reduce the total number of people exposed and thus reduce the total number who would eventually get it.
The disease is not inevitable for anyone, it is not inevitable that 70% of the population (picking an arbitrary figure here) would get the disease. It is inevitable that it was going to spread, and with proper controls that spread could be changed both in rate and total number infected.
But if you lock down so that each infected person, on average, infects less than one new person, and you do it long enough, then yes, you can completely eliminate the virus that way. And yes, that is perfectly consistent with what we know about epidemiology.
The cure may literally be worse than the disease, but we could do that.
But there comes a point where the number of cases is small enough that you use testing and contact tracing to do the rest.
The problem is that once we flattened the curve, we decided to go hogwild, masks off, open up everything and now we get to pay the price for that.
Texas is a great example of that where our state government behaved like absolute jackoffs and now we're seeing a massive amount of new cases and increased pressure on hospitals. But people assumed that 'we're far below capacity! the lockdown is pointless!' as if the lockdown wasn't the reason for that in the first place.
I would say, excessive lockdowns are not effective at fighting the virus. You win a short term victory at the cost of your long term future. You can kick the can down the road, but as soon as you re-open, if you haven't achieved herd immunity, the virus will spike again. That's going to happen to any country, anywhere.
As for China, we have no real idea of how much death or cases they have there. And from what I witnessed in Wuhan, where residents were bolted into their apartment complexes and barred from leaving, and whisked away from their homes at the first sign of a fever...I do not wish that on any free person. That is what happens when you live in a Communist prison state. I'll take liberty with all the risks that implies over Chinese tyranny any day.
With a competent western-style government you can have great results. See New Zealand. What matters is not how authoritarian the country is, but how seriously the lockdown is taken.
At this point, states want shorter lock downs and the ones that have reinstituted (partially or in whole) the previous lock down orders have done so because of rising case numbers (largely due, it seems, to people behaving as if there were no reason to continue social distancing or wearing masks).
Which state governments do you think want to continue the shutdowns and cripple their economies?
OK, rant over.
If we had a sufficiently strict lockdown early on, we could have brought transmission down to near 0, identified all new cases (and quarantined them away from the healthy population), set up strict testing at every border/airport, and been basically back to normal in 2 months, like China was. These deaths of despair are just another consequence of the Trump administration's total failure to grab the bull by the horns and come up with a plan. Trump's refusal to act forced state and city governments to figure out how to handle this, which created a major conflict of interests. State and city governments are largely funded by sales taxes, so shutting down bars/restaurants/retail/events/etc takes a crucial funding source away from state/city govts, but to stop transmission of the virus, those businesses can't be open. State/city govts can't print money like the Federal govt, and the GOP Senators are refusing to provide funds to state/city govts, which lead to the current explosion in case counts, which will just keep this going longer.
TL,DR: we absolutely need stricter management of this, or it will drag on forever.
What gives you that idea?
[0] https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/1277693321037611013
Reversing now and keeping things closed will have far worse devastation in the long run