(Are our boomer parents in rural areas in the least grateful that we collectively saved them from dying at the same rates experienced in most of the world? No.
Did it have a serious effect on our psyche? See last paragraph…).
I'd be curious to see rates by country by BMI and infection date. There were definitely lessons learned from Italy's early surge that helped other countries in the early days.
Nobody is going to be grateful for something that didn't happen, why would people be grateful for dying less as a population, if they in fact did not die less? Also there were lockdowns all over the world, not just in the US.
For example, the "US death rate" is somewhat meaningless because it encompasses multiple communities which adopted multiple strategies, with multiple levels of diligence, and covers both large concentrated populations and small distributed populations.
US deaths were not evenly spread, so there was certainly some variety of outcome with variety of mitigation.
Overall, the US death rate though is high, which suggests that it's very high in some areas. The correlation between strategy, compliance and outcome will feed researchers for a long time.
So to conclude the complete opposite of what the current data shows, dirty or not, is wrong. To then be upset at it is misguided.
Besides that? I live in an extremely low-density area, it was pretty much business as usual. Restaurants were takeout only, when parks weren't mostly deserted, people spaced themselves out. I remember meeting a couple of my wife's friends in a park and we all just sat in a giant circle. Lockdown was more a minor irritation than anything.
> Did it have a serious effect on our psyche? See last paragraph…).
That's a huge caveat you just snuck in there. I'm totally with you on the first part about largely having gotten through lockdowns, though it wasn't without some damage and suicide and crime rates did go up for example.
We simply don't have data about how many boomer parents in rural areas were saved from dying. For one thing the virus mortality rate was much less than it could have been. For another we never actually ran randomized control studies testing efficacy against death.
Given that you singled out boomers in rural areas, I also assuming that they either didn't get vaccinated or were somehow saved by those younger people in cities that did choose to get the shots. How do you assume that? The vaccines didn't prove out to be very good at preventing transmission, and preventing transmission between populated cities and rural areas is pretty well handled by geography.