That number does seem like a lot but in the same time period several million people died from other causes. Death is quite natural.
Heart disease is a systemic issue of our lifestyle and diet, and we don't know how to prevent cancer. A pathogen is fairly simple by comparison - if you don't catch it you can't die from it. Prevent the spread and people won't die from it.
See: Australia, New Zealand
> fairly simple
Until you start looking at how many lives are saved vs the second and third tier effects. Higher suicide rates from losing jobs and stress? People in third world countries dying from a cratered world economy? etc.
COVID needs to be handled and those more affected by it need protected. More hospital prep and masks around grandma... but the "fascist" and unproven shutdowns which by any measurements not only don't work but - as mentioned - causes more damage than it prevents?
nowhere near as simple as you proclaim it to be.
But that isn't what has happened in the US, largely for political reasons.
There are no good options, only less worse ones, and aggressive lockdowns have got Australia, for example, back to work. The cumulative cost of the US's failure to grasp the nettle and just shut everything down for two months properly back last March is enormous.
> Political reasons ... aggressive lockdowns in Australia
Locking down a small country like Australia is much different than locking down a country like the US. Australia is only 20% smaller than the US yet has 10% of the population. The layout is different. Temperature. Density. etc.
https://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/united-states.au...
Locking down Australia would be like locking down one of our less densely populated states - not only does the President not have the ability to do it - he's a President not a King... but locking down the country make zero sense for a virus with a 99%+ survival rate.
again... we can take precautions to protect our hospitals and to "flatten the curve" (which we are loooooong past) and to protect the vulnerable (old, existing conditions, etc)... but locking down America? Coast to coast? No chance this side of turning the President into a Dictator - which was never on the table for Trump and definitely not for Biden.
This is very wrong. Australia is very, very dense, where people live: it just has a lot of absolutely uninhabited land. Functionally Australia is almost entirely urban.
They seem to be doing a pretty good job with vaccination though, so there's that!
There's also no indication that the suicide rate in 2020 changed significantly from previous years (https://www.aihw.gov.au/suicide-self-harm-monitoring/data/co...)
And depression can be a slow killer, I’m more interested in the 2020 numbers for strokes and heart attacks. People have been hesitating in emergencies for almost an entire year (and counting).
Basically you're trying to control R. As long as you keep R under 1, you can increase and reduce measures to keep the disease under control. If R goes too far over 1, you bleeped up, and you need to resort to a lockdown to get it back under control.
The theory a lot of (european) western countries are working on is that they want to allow as much freedom as possible, but keep the worst of the disease out.
I'm not entirely convinced this is actually the strategy that optimizes freedom though. It might be better to use the method some asian countries used: close the borders, do maximum effort lockdowns anytime the virus shows up at all; and you might have less days total in lockdown or restrictions, and more days where you are free to go out and eat indoors etc.
The naïveté on display here is staggering. "You can vote your way into fascism, but you have to shoot your way out."
Right now, they're all outside enjoying summer with almost normal freedoms, while we're still stuck indoors. I must admit I'm jealous!
I don't think the Kiwis are currently preparing to shoot their way out of anything right at the moment. Probably because they're pretty much free to do whatever they want.
I will grant that New Zealand had an easier time of it as an island nation with a low population density, but it does give you pause for thought. Maybe we all could do better next time when the next pandemic rolls around.
Theory vs Practice. Who's more free right now?
But I think it's fair to say that the excess deaths [1] in 2020 have certainly amplified the reality of death, especially within the context of a shared experience. My grandma was otherwise healthy and I had had a lot of conversations with her about how much we looked forward to seeing each other once the pandemic was "over".
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm