Neither is shutting down economic activity for a significant period of time.
> people would rather see hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens die than close down restaurants for a month
What a ridiculously dishonest way to frame it. This is just political punditry at work. Restaurants closing for a month also has real people attached to it. People who lose their livelihood and don't have an ample safety net to keep them afloat. And of course it's not just restaurants, shutdowns impact many businesses in many ways, and those impact people in many other ways. And, as pointed out in the article here, it's highly questionable whether an action like this would save significant life.
> Your elected government telling you that you can't go to a restaurant during a pandemic isn't "turn-key totalitarianism."
But it is. I certainly agree it's not full-scale totalitarianism, but it is an authoritarian action in the face of a threat (which like I said reminds me of the kind of turn-key totalitarianism Bostrom mentions in the vulnerable world hypothesis). China was as successful as it was in such measures because it is inherently authoritarian, the US has been less successful because it isn't, and has deep-rooted propaganda against it. Should we wish the US was more ready to allow the government to take authoritarian action? What if the virus was 20x more deadly? What if it was 0.5x as deadly? Where do we say it's ok for the government to exert control? This is of course not a new, nor a readily decided or agreed upon, question.
Look, all told I'm not really sure what the right answer is here. Maybe we actually should be less hostile toward authoritarian actions in general for the good of society as a whole. Maybe China is actually closer to the optimal model, I don't know, I could make some compelling points (to those open to hear them) in either direction.
My main point here is just that the calculus shouldn't just be which actions reduce new cases and deaths the most, and indeed that isn't the calculus for many people, hence the resistance and difficulty in implementation. In reality the equation is and should be very complicated and nuanced, taking actions and reactions of various actors into account.