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> lockdowns being politically unfeasible

I bet 50% mortality will really focus the mind of the anti-lockdowners.

That is unfortunately unlikely - the best conspiracy theorists view any criticism of their viewpoint as further proof that their assertions are correct and will constantly spin BS to make sure their initial beliefs remain intact.

As I had said at the outbreak of COVID the tough math governments deal with during a pandemic is that there are only so many law enforcement assets and if they are exercised en masse they'll become ineffective due to transmission causing holes in the work force. You really want everyone to remain indoors voluntarily and for law enforcement to have no job to do - that's the ideal scenario since it preserves the strength of government organizations for any other incidents that may arise.

Society functions on using soft power to compel people to act in a way that's viewed as rational by society - anti-lockdowners don't respond to soft power to get them off the street you generally need to actually exercise hard power and isolate them - but a compounding issue is that we've created an environment in the internet where all these conspiracy theorists can attract cult followings and increase the amount of non-compliant folks which exceeds the capacity of law enforcement.

This problem isn't going to go away on a whim.

With a 50% mortality rate, this is quite self correcting. People who refuse to be lockdown will die.

Quite the opposite. 50% of people who refuse to lockdown that contract it will die, the other 50% will function as efficient spreaders. Let's not forget how many of these sociopaths came out of the woodwork during covid.

A whole bunch of anti-vaxxers have died from COVID but their irresponsibility lead to countless others suffering needlessly. While it's my hope that everyone gets to enjoy a long life I'm more concerned about the responsible people being harmed by those folks' irresponsibility.

50% mortality rate is almost certainly way too high and missing subclinical cases in the denominator.

Same thing happened with COVID early where the CFR was reported to be 17% in the initial cases out of China.

But the more people refusing and the longer the wave goes, the more incidental deaths there will be from people with other medical issues that have access to care restricted.

Yes, but there's an astonishing amount of them...

Religious beliefs become stronger in the light of contradicting evidence. There will be a "god of the gaps" approach with conspiracies as well.

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