I'm cynical enough at this point to wonder whether the states will add these terrible losses to the COVID-19-related statistics to advocate for stricter and longer lock-downs.
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.
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.
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.
What gives you that idea?
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.