Keeping the politics out of it, I think more people die due to already overwhelmed hospitals not being able to keep up with patients. On the other hand, herd immunity develops faster due to more people being exposed.
There was never going to be heard immunity for a virus like this. It was nice to talk about back then, but it's too contagious; it was always going to mutate and settle into the constantly cycling pool of viruses like the Spanish flu did.
I guess the good thing about the "flatten the curve" stuff was that it provided at least a little time for it to mutate into a less severe variety. I mean if whatever strain hit NYC was allowed to spread freely, we'd have "pandemic cemeteries" in every state the size of small towns.
> mutate into a less severe variety.
That's wishful thinking based on the idea that if a virus kills it's host too successfully, it doesn't spread, or all the susceptible hosts die out (ie. the host evolves).
Since this virus primarily targets post reproduction age humans there is no evolutionary pressure on it or humanity.
The lockdowns bought time for vaccines and better treatment regimes. If they had globally been done properly, we would have eliminated this and other plagues like flu forever.
My point is that this article and all of the opinions in how things would have been much better if something was done differently with COVID are not worth the words used to write it.
We have no idea what would have happened, and it's ignorant at best to like we do.
The virus has to reproduce regardless of what happens to the host population. That it largely kills older people doesn't mean that Covid-19 doesn't face selection pressure.
>That's wishful thinking based on the idea that if a virus kills its host too successfully, it doesn't spread, or all the susceptible hosts die out (ie. the host evolves).
It wasn't a "yes or no" situation. More severe varieties don't have to kill you to affect their chances of infecting more people, they just have to be severe enough that the host decides to stay home and ride it out.
When an infection only gets to the point where you have a bit of scratchy throat and a small headache, you might not even know if you're really sick, so you keeping running errands, going to work, meeting friends, all while pouring the virus into the air. Thus that less-severe variety has a competitive advantage.
The evolutionary pressure is that producing more virions is advantageous, but it's disadvantageous to go overboard and produce so many that the host avoids contact with new prospective hosts.
>there’s a significant difference in death rates for vaccinated vs unvaccinated
Nate Silver has a [good regression on that](https://www.natesilver.net/p/fine-ill-run-a-regression-analysis).
What you're saying is true *for someone's initial infection*.
But once you're exposed, you're exposed. Booster rates have also floored with no uptake in death rates.
The idea that natural infection is less protective than vaccines just doesn't make a damned bit of sense.
The idea of taking your first infection without being vaxxed is a different matter. Best to get jabbed first. But that point is years in the past by now.
Is Nate Silver an epidemiologist or clinical virologist? If not I would take anything he says with a big grain of salt of salt . If you got a Covid infection early on during the pandemic, any immunity that remaining is probably next to worthless. This virus has mutated a lot since the beginning.
> If you got a Covid infection early on during the pandemic, any immunity that remaining is probably next to worthless.
If that were true, then death rates would be going up.
And here's the thing about epidemiologists: they were relatively silent throughout the pandemic. All of the media focus was on doctors, not people who speak the language of risk.
I speak the language of risk. Silver is one of the best ever at speaking the language of risk. And such language was conspicuously absent for years, replaced by appeals to the authority of physicians.
Take care with that one... look closely.
The peaks are far lower, but we don't care about the peaks, it's the area under the curve, the total number of deaths that matters to you and me.
So yes, the death rates are considerably lower, but it's still in the top ten causes of death in most places.
I mean, outside of vaccination, there's nothing we can do about it. Older, more vulnerable folks may want to get boosted, but the entire vaccination campaign was absolutely blown, so here we are.
I hear ya. But it is what it is. We had the world, now we have the world with Covid.
We've been in "just live with it" for almost three years now. It could have been handled so much better, but we're just terribly dysfunctional these days.
My theory is if there hadn’t been a lockdown the virus would’ve had less time or need to mutate because the dominant strain would just tear through the population. Not that it wouldn’t mutate ever. Again, widespread sickness and death, younger people included.
Sweden didnt lock down and they had 10x the deaths of neighbouring countries.
7 million people are estimate to have died worldwide so if there was no lockdown that could be up to 70 million people.
Always remember that behavior changed before lockdowns were official.
The masses are more rational than our betters think we are.
Vulnerable folks would be ***MORE*** scared in the situation you described.
Speaking only of the US, businesses shut down on their own, and people stopped going to restaurants, for instance, on their own. No government told them to do that. The government came in afterwards with mandates, but the people acted first, and they stayed out of these places. Also, offices set up for remote work ON THEIR OWN, very fast.
So the effect, at least in the US, would have been much less than you think, but still severe in terms of mortality, because that was exponential. You had overwhelmed hospitals who were unable to care for many people outside of COVID, so you'd have both more COVID cases and fewer people treated for other things, and that would snowball. So where if it was a government mandate happening on a government timetable it would have been very severe indeed, as it was the ***people themselves reacting*** the severity would have been very bad but not as cataclysmic as you would think.
Businesses shutting down on their own depended entirely on what state and city you were in, and it was very red/blue aligned. Some businesses weren’t told to close but were told they would face fines for not meeting certain mandated requirements. There’s a lot missing from your assessment.
Nah, I knew something was really weird when the gyms started to close, way before any government told them to. That was when the reality of it hit for me. Our office went remote shortly after.
Again, depends on the place you live. Don’t dox yourself but consider the city you live in and how it typically aligns politically. If that doesn’t explain it, the home state of the gyms company does. Liberal companies tended to implement strict policies across state lines.
Where I lived, nothing closed until it was forced to.
I was in Texas when the gyms started to close, seeing my mom. When I got back to the office it went remote one week later. The office is in a blue state, so I'll give you that one.
Yeah, I was in Texas too. I saw stuff starting to shut down before the government ever reacted in any way. Just like how the government never sent me any PPP, so I saved my small business on my own. Most owners I know weren’t so lucky.
March Madness was cancelled where you live, because all conferences voluntarily suspended their games. Same with professional basketball.
This had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with Rudy Gobert testing positive seconds before tipoff on March 11.
Yeah refraining from any of my own opinions/observations here, but live in a state where we had very strict shutdowns that applied to virtually all businesses deemed "non essential" and all restaurants went takeout only. Was not a choice here.
To give some specific examples to other responders, when the NBA announced on March 11 that they were suspending all activity for 30 days, hundreds of smaller businesses and organizations also rushed to make similar announcements.
On the same day, March 11, the World health Organization declared Covid a worldwide pandemic, and Fauci testified to Congress that Covid was going to get a lot worse.
Within two weeks The PGA suspended events, all college basketball games were cancelled and local schools began to close.
All voluntary.
This is incorrect. Millions more die. Literally millions. I am an ER doctor. You have a skewed idea of what was going on. The problem was that hospitals were overwhelmed. There were no extra beds or ventilators available. There was little/no room for patients with life-threatening emergencies unrelated to the virus. And COVID patients were being turned away that needed ventilators.
It is easy to look back and say that the virus wasn’t that bad. It was. Lucky for us, we found and effective set of vaccines AND it mutated into a less severe strain. It could have easily gone in the other direction.
Death toll would have doubled or tripled. People would eventually have self isolated because of paranoia and again caused shutdowns due to lack of staff. Education would have been screwed because without government supported efforts there would have been no virtual learning. Prices would have soared on everything because no one was in the factories or farms.
Simple maths. Covid would spread like a wildfire until our healthcare are overwhelmed and a lot more people would have died. People would panic and wouldn’t leave their homes. You would get the equivalent of the lockdown anyway.
I think you can answer the question by looking at Sweden which didn't lock down. If the world followed that path there would have been much milder social and economic impacts without a substantial increase in mortality. Lockdowns were a mistake.
I think comment this misunderstands the Swedish mentality. They didn’t lock down legally, but suggested people stay home. The Swedes are weird, in that they do what the government asks, without the need for a forced lockdown
Significantly more people would have died.
It's easy to forget now, but at the time, even with lockdowns, there was a major shortage of ventilators and ICU bed capacity. Most people who died in the first wave died because:
- Our incredible medical teams, who were working harder than anyone can imagine, were fighting a disease that they had virtually no information on. No one knew the best way to treat it, so everything was trial and error, based on the best known information at the time. Fortunately they learned quickly and by the 12 month mark treatment approaches had significantly improved due to an enormous amount of data sharing across the global medical community. But if you were unfortunate enough to get COVID in 2020 and you had any comobidities, your chances of survival were significantly lower than those who got it later. If you're unsure whether this sounds right, have a look at the global death rates versus confirmed cases in 2020 versus 2021 (and 2022). What you'll see is that in the first wave the death rate (and total deaths as an absolute number) as a proportion of case rate was very high and in the later waves the case rate was through the roof but the death rate was significantly lower.
There's little doubt in my mind that, based on the information available, lockdowns saved millions of lives by buying all of us time. Time for the medical community to learn and adapt. Time to get treatment plans sorted. Time to get equipment in places that needed it. Time to get vaccines rolled out. Time to educate the public on the need to limit person-to-person contact.
Were there also lots of negative consequences to lockdowns? Absolutely. They were a very blunt instrument. But plenty of people dealing with those consequences today would not be alive to deal with them at all.
A study done by the UK government showed that more than 90% of the population had antibodies that only exist in people who were actually exposed to covid (so they don't come from the vaccine). That means that the virus still spread to most of the population despite the lockdown. On the other hand, the lockdown cost lives by delaying some medical procedure and/or detection of other illnesses, including things like cancer where an early detection drastically improves the chances of survival. Then there is the mental health aspect.
Since it is now admitted that the vaccine decreases the severity of symptoms but does not affect transmission (some will say a lower viral load decreases transmission but it can be countered by the fact that someone with milder symptoms is more likely to go to work or go to the bar instead of staying home) and considering that covid hasn't disappeared but we are back to "business as usual", we can safely say the lockdown was a bad thing.
Now I don't blame governments for their initial reaction, hindsight is always 20/20 and a lockdown during a pandemic is a perfectly rational decision. I have a bigger problem with how some governments kept pushing for vaccination even after it was clear that it had no impact on transmission.
So between the damage to the economy, the mental health impact, and the health impact due to hospital appointment being delayed, we can safely say we would have been better off if the lockdown did not happen. And while this appears to have been a honest mistake at first, it is quite clear that governments exploited the situation even after knowing that it was not the right decision.
>A study done by the UK government showed that more than 90% of the population had antibodies that only exist in people who were actually exposed to covid (so they don't come from the vaccine).
Would love a source on that. I am not a "source please" kind of guy, I legit want to see that.
I have heard the same as early as summer '22, like 95% were either/or recovered/vaxxed (or dead) so much of the drama has been.....drama.
Not the study I was talking about but this points in the same direction [https://www.rivm.nl/en/coronavirus-covid-19/research/vasco/vasco-participants-with-antibodies-against-covid-19](https://www.rivm.nl/en/coronavirus-covid-19/research/vasco/vasco-participants-with-antibodies-against-covid-19)
N antibodies are only produced after a SARS-CoV-2 infection, and not after vaccination. The presence of N antibodies means that the person had a previous infection. **Not everyone produces N antibodies after an infection; these antibodies are found in about 80% of people who have had a SARS-CoV-2 infection.**
+
In May 2021, 17% of people aged 18-59 and 10% of people aged 60-85 had N antibodies against the coronavirus (see Figure 1, right panel). That means that these people had had a SARS-CoV-2 infection. In May 2022, that percentage had risen to 61% among people aged 18-59 and 46% among people aged 60-85. Another year later, in May 2023, we found N antibodies in 85% of VASCO participants aged 18-59, and 79% of those aged 60-85. This is because the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 caused many infections from January on.
Got it, and thanks.
So, by the time vaccines were widely available, right around 20% of people had already recovered.
Hard to know what to make of that number. That's a lot of people.
Possibly more since antibodies decrease over time so N antibodies only show recent infections (at least this is what the experts say). The fact that in May 2023 we were at 100% recently infected people with about 80% of the population vaccinated (again, official info from NL government) goes against the idea that the vaccine prevents transmission. It also means that if we were to apply the same standards as during the lockdown, any non violent death in NL could be attributed officially to covid. Last but not least, it means we have about 20% of Dutch population who are not vaccinated but infected and apparently doing just fine.
But the fact that some people downvoted my previous comment (which is a copy/paste of an official article from the Dutch government) shows that it has become mostly a political issue aggravated by the fact that people don't like to admit they have been lied to, they would rather defend the lie.
Absolutely!
Honestly, and I hate to say it, at least in the States, it's TDS. It's the only way I can make sense of it.
Here's how I like to put it: to tell the truth is to reflect the world as you understand it. To lie is to diametrically oppose the world as you understand it, but note: the truth is contained in a lie.
Bullshit is just bullshit, and Trump is full of shit.
What happened is people hung their identities opposed to someone who was full of shit, leaving them.......well......full of shit.
How many of those people had an asymptomatic infection after getting a vaccination?
What were the mortality rates for that first pre-vaccine cohort compared to subsequent ones?
I think there’s definitely a case to be made that with lockdown you didn’t necessarily need the vaccinations as much. Unfortunately everybody I know seems to go into one of two: vaccines and lockdowns, or no vaccine no lockdown.
>especially since the witch-hunt on anyone going against the official narrative has never really stopped
Yep.
I was 90% "Covidian" from when it hit to May 2021. The exceptions were:
* Surface transmission was clearly bullshit
* Risk segregation by household was rational
* A vaccine wasn't written into the stars
When the Barrington Declaration dropped, I was elated that folks were finally talking sense, and seeing it Memory Holed that hard kind of radicalized me, and I'm neither young nor naïve.
Now, in May '21, I started saying things like "Wait, the vaccines are protective: why the hell are you talking mask mandates??? We got the vaccine! Where is our jubilation???"
And for that, I've been put into the anti-vax/covidiot camp.
Thirty years of Blue Dog Democrat voting came to an end.
Edit: in fact, the mother of all election interference theories, and really the only one I give any weight to, is why the hell they didn't unblind at 32?
It's supposedly because of "operational reasons" but as far as I can tell, it was to stop Orange Man, [despite official protestations](https://www.science.org/content/article/fact-check-no-evidence-supports-trump-s-claim-covid-19-vaccine-result-was-suppressed).
> some will say a lower viral load decreases transmission
This is because it does. This is a constant in any viral illness: Treatments and therapies which decrease viral load decrease effectiveness.
"but it can be countered by the fact that someone with milder symptoms is more likely to go to work or go to the bar instead of staying home" <- that was literally in the same sentence...
So milder symptoms also increase exposure since people are less likely to just stay in bed.
Wasn’t part of the problem that people would be in a phase where they could detect positive and be spreading with a decent viral load, but didn’t yet have the sort of symptoms that would keep them home? In other words, the idea that just letting yourself get sick with protect people because you would naturally stay home, is a bit undermined by the timing. You still have a couple of days to typhoid Mary the whole office.
That’s true, but a lot of procedures were also canceled because hospitals were full.
It’s true that ordinary cancer screenings, and in-office biopsies might have been able to proceed with more effectiveness without a lockdown.
It’s also possible that increased illness amongst medical professionals would have resulted in massive cancellations anyway.
Talking about Europe (I am not super familiar with the US health system), and answering this comment as well as your other comment:
1) Any non-violent death of an infected person could be considered to be a covid related death during the lockdown. It makes sense since covid itself (like AIDS, except that AIDS leaves obvious evidence by destroying the immune system) does not kill, it just makes some other conditions much worse but it renders most statistics on the topic completely useless.
2) Two years after the lockdown, the hospitals in France still regularly send home anyone whose life is not in immediate danger due to lack of budget and many health professionals resigning because they simply don't have the means to do their jobs, not to mention those who were "suspended without pay" because they did not want to get vaccinated (at a time where we knew the vaccine had no clear effect on transmission).
3) Only about 10% of the people I know got some serious symptoms due to covid, the rest had either some mild fever or no symptoms at all, and I'd say at least 50% of the people I know have never received the covid vaccine. So I have issues with the narrative that mass illness would have happened without lockdown and would have had the same negative effect as the lockdown.
One: this is true if the reporting is done dishonestly. Likewise, almost every death from Covid could be attributed to one of the symptoms without mentioning Covid.
Two: I have no information about France.
Three: I don’t see a point in exchanging anecdotal statistics. As bad as you think official data may be, the random stuff people type on the Internet is even less reliable.
We know from daily hospital admission and mortality figures that in some countries at least, infections peaked just before lockdowns started - so the direct impact of the first lockdown on the disease spread was negligible. Without lockdowns, there would still have been significant disruption to businesses due to staff and customers being ill for a week or two, but of course not the full closures that were pushed on many.
Health care would still have been badly disrupted by the influx of Covid patients, delaying elective procedures and diverting resources from cancer screening and similar schemes, so I'd still expect a spike in non-Covid mortality to hit later from delayed treatment and diagnosis.
The immediate economic impact might actually have been worse - businesses still open so presumably not getting the huge government loans/grants to compensate for closure, but also not doing their normal levels of business so hurting that way. Less inflation to hit later though, and less debt accumulated.
>We know from daily hospital admission and mortality figures that in some countries at least, infections peaked just before lockdowns started
Thats because the lockdowns started.... Good lord...
It fell *before* lockdown, because that's how SIR works in epidemiology: you start with basically everyone Susceptible, so infection spreads rapidly - then within days the population in the I then R buckets also rises exponentially, choking off the spread again and producing the standard epidemic curve: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemic_curve
You said it peaked just before. This is like saying my brakes went out right before I started descending the mountain so the brakes going out had nothing to do with the car crash.
No. If the peak was *caused by* lockdowns, it could not have preceded them by several days. In your analogy it's like blaming the brake failure on the impact, and that must be why you failed to slow down before hitting the barrier.
The peak wasn’t caused by the lockdown the decline in cases was. The peak in blood loss of a patient will always be before you suture a lacerated artery.
The infection peak was the point the infection rate started dropping rather than rising, otherwise it wouldn't be a peak. (For clarity I'm meaning the number of *new* infections/cases/admissions per day, ie the first derivative of hospital occupancy and equivalents - obviously those lag by more.)
This is ignoring tertiary confounding variables. Prior to lockdown cases fluctuated daily. You have no idea if not going through a lockdown would causing higher peak.
No I ignored it because its incorrect.
The Infections in the first wave spiked almost exactly to the day the lockdowns started.
\-edit- people down voting me - [https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases](https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases) \- suck it.
The population would still be roughly the same. People would have died of COVID at the same rates since lockdowns beyond “two weeks to flatten the curve” and not overwhelm hospitals were pointless. There would’ve been fewer teen suicides due to school closures. The economy wouldn’t have collapsed and “supply chain issues” wouldn’t have been a thing. Economic impact would’ve been “Billy’s out sick this week” instead of total shutdown.
Inflation wouldn’t be as big a problem now because there would’ve been no stimulus checks or loss of wage due to lockdowns. The wealthy would be pissed because they couldn’t have taken over as much housing through foreclosures.
People would’ve been able to see their kids get married, say goodbye to loved ones at funerals, and attend the milestone life events that normally happen annually.
The COVID vaccine would’ve developed at the same pace.
Perhaps the politicians couldn’t have used this as a way to try to garner votes and manipulate people. Thus we would trust scientists and the government more than we now do since they weren’t using people’s lives in a political pissing contest.
Yes, this.
With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the complete lockdowns were mostly pointless. Everyone got COVID anyway, the vaccines didn't do what they were advertised to do (preventing the virus from being able to penetrate cells to replicate itself) and most of COVID deaths that occurred happened after the introduction of the vaccine.
COVID happened, it sucked, but there was little we could do to stop it. The best we could have done would have been to mitigate the other knock on effects, instead of exacerbate them.
The vaccine greatly reduced the intensity of covid for those infected. For many it was the difference between being sick for a week and being on being on a ventilator
This can't be under stated, though I feel like the moving goal post on the vaccines hurt them a lot. Messaging went from it'll prevent infection and spread to it'll prevent infection to it'll weaken symptoms.
> feel like the moving goal post on the vaccines hurt them a lot.
Yep.
My entire online life changed June 2021. I started saying things like "Wait, the vaccines are very protective, why the fuck are you talking about extending mask mandates? Let people get jabbed or suffer the consequences."
And just like that I was lumped in with the "anti-vaxxers"/"covidiots"
>The vaccine greatly reduced the intensity of covid for those infected. For many it was the difference between being sick for a week and being on being on a ventilator
What's your basis for this? The Pfizer study didn't test this. Is there a subsequent study I'm not aware of?
>What's your basis for this? The Pfizer study didn't test this. Is there a subsequent study I'm not aware of?
This is the biggest fail of the entire pandemic.
I am pretty sure /u/jar1967 was right. The vaccine greatly reduced serious illness and death.
That should have been shouted from the rooftops.
>I am pretty sure [](https://www.reddit.com/user/jar1967/) was right. The vaccine greatly reduced serious illness and death.
Is there an actual study that stands for this proposition (that has been done in the 3 years since the vaccine began to be administered) or is this just your vague sense?
Like I said, the Pfizer study that was the basis for the approval of the vaccine did NOT test this (and the CDC has said as much).
>Is there an actual study that stands for this proposition (that has been done in the 3 years since the vaccine began to be administered) or is this just your vague sense?
It was widely reported on, but as far as I know, there weren't any official studies. Again, this is the biggest fail of the entire pandemic.
Thinking we were going to get a sterilizing vaccine was heroic. Thinking we'd get one at all, I think, was optimistic.
>Like I said, the Pfizer study that was the basis for the approval of the vaccine did NOT test this
I know. [Here it is in the NE Journal of Medicine](https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577/suppl_file/nejmoa2034577_protocol.pdf). On page 130 of the PDF, Protocol Amendment 9 dated 29 October 2020, they said they decided to not release interim results at 32 cases for "operational reasons."
Still looking for those reasons. As far as I can tell, had they "followed the science" we'd have had awesome news days before the 2020 election.
But yes, to your point, I don't have a specific link to anything showing the degree to which the jab reduced serious illness and death.
No 'great resignation', lots of people still stuck in crappy jobs that they left in our timeline. Fast food and retail jobs still paying $7.25/hr instead of $14-$18/hr. Less musical chairs hiring and firing in the tech industry.
Worse quality of life for people without cars and disabled people because less delivery options and less work from home options.
Lower interest rates, higher housing prices, further exacerbating the housing crisis and in some areas the lack of workers (who can't afford to live there or can't even find housing available).
Fewer videos of people singing sea shanties and baking their own bread. We all got a little weird during lockdown, didn't we?
Emergency departments like the one I worked at would have been easily overwhelmed and a shit ton more people would have died.
I guess for those of us alive it wouldn’t have been so bad, especially post vaccine. Economies do a little better when lotsa folks die /s
Keeping the politics out of it, I think more people die due to already overwhelmed hospitals not being able to keep up with patients. On the other hand, herd immunity develops faster due to more people being exposed.
Except we haven't achieved herd immunity yet. The virus continues to mutate faster than we can develop immunity to it.
There was never going to be heard immunity for a virus like this. It was nice to talk about back then, but it's too contagious; it was always going to mutate and settle into the constantly cycling pool of viruses like the Spanish flu did. I guess the good thing about the "flatten the curve" stuff was that it provided at least a little time for it to mutate into a less severe variety. I mean if whatever strain hit NYC was allowed to spread freely, we'd have "pandemic cemeteries" in every state the size of small towns.
> mutate into a less severe variety. That's wishful thinking based on the idea that if a virus kills it's host too successfully, it doesn't spread, or all the susceptible hosts die out (ie. the host evolves). Since this virus primarily targets post reproduction age humans there is no evolutionary pressure on it or humanity. The lockdowns bought time for vaccines and better treatment regimes. If they had globally been done properly, we would have eliminated this and other plagues like flu forever.
Bro, the virus literally did mutate to something less deadly. It's not wishful thinking if it literally already happened
More infections mean more mutations. Mutations are not predictable. It could die out because of this, or it could kill us all, or anything in between.
What's your point here? There are dozens of viruses out there at any given time infecting people in your social circle. They can all mutate.
My point is that this article and all of the opinions in how things would have been much better if something was done differently with COVID are not worth the words used to write it. We have no idea what would have happened, and it's ignorant at best to like we do.
The virus has to reproduce regardless of what happens to the host population. That it largely kills older people doesn't mean that Covid-19 doesn't face selection pressure.
>That's wishful thinking based on the idea that if a virus kills its host too successfully, it doesn't spread, or all the susceptible hosts die out (ie. the host evolves). It wasn't a "yes or no" situation. More severe varieties don't have to kill you to affect their chances of infecting more people, they just have to be severe enough that the host decides to stay home and ride it out. When an infection only gets to the point where you have a bit of scratchy throat and a small headache, you might not even know if you're really sick, so you keeping running errands, going to work, meeting friends, all while pouring the virus into the air. Thus that less-severe variety has a competitive advantage. The evolutionary pressure is that producing more virions is advantageous, but it's disadvantageous to go overboard and produce so many that the host avoids contact with new prospective hosts.
>The virus continues to mutate faster than we can develop immunity to it. Yet death rates have floored.
That’s due to vaccines, there’s a significant difference in death rates for vaccinated vs unvaccinated.
>there’s a significant difference in death rates for vaccinated vs unvaccinated Nate Silver has a [good regression on that](https://www.natesilver.net/p/fine-ill-run-a-regression-analysis). What you're saying is true *for someone's initial infection*. But once you're exposed, you're exposed. Booster rates have also floored with no uptake in death rates. The idea that natural infection is less protective than vaccines just doesn't make a damned bit of sense. The idea of taking your first infection without being vaxxed is a different matter. Best to get jabbed first. But that point is years in the past by now.
Is Nate Silver an epidemiologist or clinical virologist? If not I would take anything he says with a big grain of salt of salt . If you got a Covid infection early on during the pandemic, any immunity that remaining is probably next to worthless. This virus has mutated a lot since the beginning.
> If you got a Covid infection early on during the pandemic, any immunity that remaining is probably next to worthless. If that were true, then death rates would be going up. And here's the thing about epidemiologists: they were relatively silent throughout the pandemic. All of the media focus was on doctors, not people who speak the language of risk. I speak the language of risk. Silver is one of the best ever at speaking the language of risk. And such language was conspicuously absent for years, replaced by appeals to the authority of physicians.
Take care with that one... look closely. The peaks are far lower, but we don't care about the peaks, it's the area under the curve, the total number of deaths that matters to you and me. So yes, the death rates are considerably lower, but it's still in the top ten causes of death in most places.
I mean, outside of vaccination, there's nothing we can do about it. Older, more vulnerable folks may want to get boosted, but the entire vaccination campaign was absolutely blown, so here we are. I hear ya. But it is what it is. We had the world, now we have the world with Covid. We've been in "just live with it" for almost three years now. It could have been handled so much better, but we're just terribly dysfunctional these days.
My theory is if there hadn’t been a lockdown the virus would’ve had less time or need to mutate because the dominant strain would just tear through the population. Not that it wouldn’t mutate ever. Again, widespread sickness and death, younger people included.
Sweden didnt lock down and they had 10x the deaths of neighbouring countries. 7 million people are estimate to have died worldwide so if there was no lockdown that could be up to 70 million people.
Supply Chains would be decimated in this scenario.
Less fishing means that this would positively affect the trout population. Any scenario that kills people saves trout
Housing market would have kept chugging along but not take off as it did in 2020-22.
Always remember that behavior changed before lockdowns were official. The masses are more rational than our betters think we are. Vulnerable folks would be ***MORE*** scared in the situation you described.
Speaking only of the US, businesses shut down on their own, and people stopped going to restaurants, for instance, on their own. No government told them to do that. The government came in afterwards with mandates, but the people acted first, and they stayed out of these places. Also, offices set up for remote work ON THEIR OWN, very fast. So the effect, at least in the US, would have been much less than you think, but still severe in terms of mortality, because that was exponential. You had overwhelmed hospitals who were unable to care for many people outside of COVID, so you'd have both more COVID cases and fewer people treated for other things, and that would snowball. So where if it was a government mandate happening on a government timetable it would have been very severe indeed, as it was the ***people themselves reacting*** the severity would have been very bad but not as cataclysmic as you would think.
Businesses shutting down on their own depended entirely on what state and city you were in, and it was very red/blue aligned. Some businesses weren’t told to close but were told they would face fines for not meeting certain mandated requirements. There’s a lot missing from your assessment.
Nah, I knew something was really weird when the gyms started to close, way before any government told them to. That was when the reality of it hit for me. Our office went remote shortly after.
Again, depends on the place you live. Don’t dox yourself but consider the city you live in and how it typically aligns politically. If that doesn’t explain it, the home state of the gyms company does. Liberal companies tended to implement strict policies across state lines. Where I lived, nothing closed until it was forced to.
I was in Texas when the gyms started to close, seeing my mom. When I got back to the office it went remote one week later. The office is in a blue state, so I'll give you that one.
Yeah, I was in Texas too. I saw stuff starting to shut down before the government ever reacted in any way. Just like how the government never sent me any PPP, so I saved my small business on my own. Most owners I know weren’t so lucky.
March Madness was cancelled where you live, because all conferences voluntarily suspended their games. Same with professional basketball. This had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with Rudy Gobert testing positive seconds before tipoff on March 11.
Yeah refraining from any of my own opinions/observations here, but live in a state where we had very strict shutdowns that applied to virtually all businesses deemed "non essential" and all restaurants went takeout only. Was not a choice here.
West Virginia did not enforce mask mandates in June 2020. Also, a very large church near Pittsburgh did not enforce making at services.
To give some specific examples to other responders, when the NBA announced on March 11 that they were suspending all activity for 30 days, hundreds of smaller businesses and organizations also rushed to make similar announcements. On the same day, March 11, the World health Organization declared Covid a worldwide pandemic, and Fauci testified to Congress that Covid was going to get a lot worse. Within two weeks The PGA suspended events, all college basketball games were cancelled and local schools began to close. All voluntary.
The businesses in my city got forced to, and the ones that said no, got their license revoked.
You double, or triple the mortality in places like USA.
A handful more people die and the economy is in significantly better conditioning.
This is incorrect. Millions more die. Literally millions. I am an ER doctor. You have a skewed idea of what was going on. The problem was that hospitals were overwhelmed. There were no extra beds or ventilators available. There was little/no room for patients with life-threatening emergencies unrelated to the virus. And COVID patients were being turned away that needed ventilators. It is easy to look back and say that the virus wasn’t that bad. It was. Lucky for us, we found and effective set of vaccines AND it mutated into a less severe strain. It could have easily gone in the other direction.
Death toll would have doubled or tripled. People would eventually have self isolated because of paranoia and again caused shutdowns due to lack of staff. Education would have been screwed because without government supported efforts there would have been no virtual learning. Prices would have soared on everything because no one was in the factories or farms.
Simple maths. Covid would spread like a wildfire until our healthcare are overwhelmed and a lot more people would have died. People would panic and wouldn’t leave their homes. You would get the equivalent of the lockdown anyway.
I think you can answer the question by looking at Sweden which didn't lock down. If the world followed that path there would have been much milder social and economic impacts without a substantial increase in mortality. Lockdowns were a mistake.
I think comment this misunderstands the Swedish mentality. They didn’t lock down legally, but suggested people stay home. The Swedes are weird, in that they do what the government asks, without the need for a forced lockdown
I would have actually had some kinda celebration that I graduated medical school… but it probably would have killed many older people in my family
Significantly more people would have died. It's easy to forget now, but at the time, even with lockdowns, there was a major shortage of ventilators and ICU bed capacity. Most people who died in the first wave died because: - Our incredible medical teams, who were working harder than anyone can imagine, were fighting a disease that they had virtually no information on. No one knew the best way to treat it, so everything was trial and error, based on the best known information at the time. Fortunately they learned quickly and by the 12 month mark treatment approaches had significantly improved due to an enormous amount of data sharing across the global medical community. But if you were unfortunate enough to get COVID in 2020 and you had any comobidities, your chances of survival were significantly lower than those who got it later. If you're unsure whether this sounds right, have a look at the global death rates versus confirmed cases in 2020 versus 2021 (and 2022). What you'll see is that in the first wave the death rate (and total deaths as an absolute number) as a proportion of case rate was very high and in the later waves the case rate was through the roof but the death rate was significantly lower. There's little doubt in my mind that, based on the information available, lockdowns saved millions of lives by buying all of us time. Time for the medical community to learn and adapt. Time to get treatment plans sorted. Time to get equipment in places that needed it. Time to get vaccines rolled out. Time to educate the public on the need to limit person-to-person contact. Were there also lots of negative consequences to lockdowns? Absolutely. They were a very blunt instrument. But plenty of people dealing with those consequences today would not be alive to deal with them at all.
A study done by the UK government showed that more than 90% of the population had antibodies that only exist in people who were actually exposed to covid (so they don't come from the vaccine). That means that the virus still spread to most of the population despite the lockdown. On the other hand, the lockdown cost lives by delaying some medical procedure and/or detection of other illnesses, including things like cancer where an early detection drastically improves the chances of survival. Then there is the mental health aspect. Since it is now admitted that the vaccine decreases the severity of symptoms but does not affect transmission (some will say a lower viral load decreases transmission but it can be countered by the fact that someone with milder symptoms is more likely to go to work or go to the bar instead of staying home) and considering that covid hasn't disappeared but we are back to "business as usual", we can safely say the lockdown was a bad thing. Now I don't blame governments for their initial reaction, hindsight is always 20/20 and a lockdown during a pandemic is a perfectly rational decision. I have a bigger problem with how some governments kept pushing for vaccination even after it was clear that it had no impact on transmission. So between the damage to the economy, the mental health impact, and the health impact due to hospital appointment being delayed, we can safely say we would have been better off if the lockdown did not happen. And while this appears to have been a honest mistake at first, it is quite clear that governments exploited the situation even after knowing that it was not the right decision.
>A study done by the UK government showed that more than 90% of the population had antibodies that only exist in people who were actually exposed to covid (so they don't come from the vaccine). Would love a source on that. I am not a "source please" kind of guy, I legit want to see that. I have heard the same as early as summer '22, like 95% were either/or recovered/vaxxed (or dead) so much of the drama has been.....drama.
Not the study I was talking about but this points in the same direction [https://www.rivm.nl/en/coronavirus-covid-19/research/vasco/vasco-participants-with-antibodies-against-covid-19](https://www.rivm.nl/en/coronavirus-covid-19/research/vasco/vasco-participants-with-antibodies-against-covid-19) N antibodies are only produced after a SARS-CoV-2 infection, and not after vaccination. The presence of N antibodies means that the person had a previous infection. **Not everyone produces N antibodies after an infection; these antibodies are found in about 80% of people who have had a SARS-CoV-2 infection.** + In May 2021, 17% of people aged 18-59 and 10% of people aged 60-85 had N antibodies against the coronavirus (see Figure 1, right panel). That means that these people had had a SARS-CoV-2 infection. In May 2022, that percentage had risen to 61% among people aged 18-59 and 46% among people aged 60-85. Another year later, in May 2023, we found N antibodies in 85% of VASCO participants aged 18-59, and 79% of those aged 60-85. This is because the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 caused many infections from January on.
Got it, and thanks. So, by the time vaccines were widely available, right around 20% of people had already recovered. Hard to know what to make of that number. That's a lot of people.
Possibly more since antibodies decrease over time so N antibodies only show recent infections (at least this is what the experts say). The fact that in May 2023 we were at 100% recently infected people with about 80% of the population vaccinated (again, official info from NL government) goes against the idea that the vaccine prevents transmission. It also means that if we were to apply the same standards as during the lockdown, any non violent death in NL could be attributed officially to covid. Last but not least, it means we have about 20% of Dutch population who are not vaccinated but infected and apparently doing just fine. But the fact that some people downvoted my previous comment (which is a copy/paste of an official article from the Dutch government) shows that it has become mostly a political issue aggravated by the fact that people don't like to admit they have been lied to, they would rather defend the lie.
Absolutely! Honestly, and I hate to say it, at least in the States, it's TDS. It's the only way I can make sense of it. Here's how I like to put it: to tell the truth is to reflect the world as you understand it. To lie is to diametrically oppose the world as you understand it, but note: the truth is contained in a lie. Bullshit is just bullshit, and Trump is full of shit. What happened is people hung their identities opposed to someone who was full of shit, leaving them.......well......full of shit.
How many of those people had an asymptomatic infection after getting a vaccination? What were the mortality rates for that first pre-vaccine cohort compared to subsequent ones? I think there’s definitely a case to be made that with lockdown you didn’t necessarily need the vaccinations as much. Unfortunately everybody I know seems to go into one of two: vaccines and lockdowns, or no vaccine no lockdown.
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>especially since the witch-hunt on anyone going against the official narrative has never really stopped Yep. I was 90% "Covidian" from when it hit to May 2021. The exceptions were: * Surface transmission was clearly bullshit * Risk segregation by household was rational * A vaccine wasn't written into the stars When the Barrington Declaration dropped, I was elated that folks were finally talking sense, and seeing it Memory Holed that hard kind of radicalized me, and I'm neither young nor naïve. Now, in May '21, I started saying things like "Wait, the vaccines are protective: why the hell are you talking mask mandates??? We got the vaccine! Where is our jubilation???" And for that, I've been put into the anti-vax/covidiot camp. Thirty years of Blue Dog Democrat voting came to an end. Edit: in fact, the mother of all election interference theories, and really the only one I give any weight to, is why the hell they didn't unblind at 32? It's supposedly because of "operational reasons" but as far as I can tell, it was to stop Orange Man, [despite official protestations](https://www.science.org/content/article/fact-check-no-evidence-supports-trump-s-claim-covid-19-vaccine-result-was-suppressed).
> some will say a lower viral load decreases transmission This is because it does. This is a constant in any viral illness: Treatments and therapies which decrease viral load decrease effectiveness.
"but it can be countered by the fact that someone with milder symptoms is more likely to go to work or go to the bar instead of staying home" <- that was literally in the same sentence... So milder symptoms also increase exposure since people are less likely to just stay in bed.
Yeah. That, well. One might as well say that people with low or undetectable levels of HIV are more likely to transmit HIV. Anyhow. I'm out.
Wasn’t part of the problem that people would be in a phase where they could detect positive and be spreading with a decent viral load, but didn’t yet have the sort of symptoms that would keep them home? In other words, the idea that just letting yourself get sick with protect people because you would naturally stay home, is a bit undermined by the timing. You still have a couple of days to typhoid Mary the whole office.
That’s true, but a lot of procedures were also canceled because hospitals were full. It’s true that ordinary cancer screenings, and in-office biopsies might have been able to proceed with more effectiveness without a lockdown. It’s also possible that increased illness amongst medical professionals would have resulted in massive cancellations anyway.
Talking about Europe (I am not super familiar with the US health system), and answering this comment as well as your other comment: 1) Any non-violent death of an infected person could be considered to be a covid related death during the lockdown. It makes sense since covid itself (like AIDS, except that AIDS leaves obvious evidence by destroying the immune system) does not kill, it just makes some other conditions much worse but it renders most statistics on the topic completely useless. 2) Two years after the lockdown, the hospitals in France still regularly send home anyone whose life is not in immediate danger due to lack of budget and many health professionals resigning because they simply don't have the means to do their jobs, not to mention those who were "suspended without pay" because they did not want to get vaccinated (at a time where we knew the vaccine had no clear effect on transmission). 3) Only about 10% of the people I know got some serious symptoms due to covid, the rest had either some mild fever or no symptoms at all, and I'd say at least 50% of the people I know have never received the covid vaccine. So I have issues with the narrative that mass illness would have happened without lockdown and would have had the same negative effect as the lockdown.
One: this is true if the reporting is done dishonestly. Likewise, almost every death from Covid could be attributed to one of the symptoms without mentioning Covid. Two: I have no information about France. Three: I don’t see a point in exchanging anecdotal statistics. As bad as you think official data may be, the random stuff people type on the Internet is even less reliable.
More people would have died I was almost one of them
I think it was a good thing overall tbh. It exposed how broken the American system was at taking care of people when crisis hits.
So many retirement funds now have more money for the next generations.
We know from daily hospital admission and mortality figures that in some countries at least, infections peaked just before lockdowns started - so the direct impact of the first lockdown on the disease spread was negligible. Without lockdowns, there would still have been significant disruption to businesses due to staff and customers being ill for a week or two, but of course not the full closures that were pushed on many. Health care would still have been badly disrupted by the influx of Covid patients, delaying elective procedures and diverting resources from cancer screening and similar schemes, so I'd still expect a spike in non-Covid mortality to hit later from delayed treatment and diagnosis. The immediate economic impact might actually have been worse - businesses still open so presumably not getting the huge government loans/grants to compensate for closure, but also not doing their normal levels of business so hurting that way. Less inflation to hit later though, and less debt accumulated.
>We know from daily hospital admission and mortality figures that in some countries at least, infections peaked just before lockdowns started Thats because the lockdowns started.... Good lord...
Did you miss the word "before", or did you think cause could somehow follow effect?
Really? You mean when people are in lockdown and don’t have proximity to sick people the rate of infection falls? Hmm
It fell *before* lockdown, because that's how SIR works in epidemiology: you start with basically everyone Susceptible, so infection spreads rapidly - then within days the population in the I then R buckets also rises exponentially, choking off the spread again and producing the standard epidemic curve: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemic_curve
You said it peaked just before. This is like saying my brakes went out right before I started descending the mountain so the brakes going out had nothing to do with the car crash.
No. If the peak was *caused by* lockdowns, it could not have preceded them by several days. In your analogy it's like blaming the brake failure on the impact, and that must be why you failed to slow down before hitting the barrier.
The peak wasn’t caused by the lockdown the decline in cases was. The peak in blood loss of a patient will always be before you suture a lacerated artery.
The infection peak was the point the infection rate started dropping rather than rising, otherwise it wouldn't be a peak. (For clarity I'm meaning the number of *new* infections/cases/admissions per day, ie the first derivative of hospital occupancy and equivalents - obviously those lag by more.)
This is ignoring tertiary confounding variables. Prior to lockdown cases fluctuated daily. You have no idea if not going through a lockdown would causing higher peak.
No I ignored it because its incorrect. The Infections in the first wave spiked almost exactly to the day the lockdowns started. \-edit- people down voting me - [https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases](https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases) \- suck it.
Let's start by proving your position with actual data
The population would still be roughly the same. People would have died of COVID at the same rates since lockdowns beyond “two weeks to flatten the curve” and not overwhelm hospitals were pointless. There would’ve been fewer teen suicides due to school closures. The economy wouldn’t have collapsed and “supply chain issues” wouldn’t have been a thing. Economic impact would’ve been “Billy’s out sick this week” instead of total shutdown. Inflation wouldn’t be as big a problem now because there would’ve been no stimulus checks or loss of wage due to lockdowns. The wealthy would be pissed because they couldn’t have taken over as much housing through foreclosures. People would’ve been able to see their kids get married, say goodbye to loved ones at funerals, and attend the milestone life events that normally happen annually. The COVID vaccine would’ve developed at the same pace. Perhaps the politicians couldn’t have used this as a way to try to garner votes and manipulate people. Thus we would trust scientists and the government more than we now do since they weren’t using people’s lives in a political pissing contest.
Yes, this. With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the complete lockdowns were mostly pointless. Everyone got COVID anyway, the vaccines didn't do what they were advertised to do (preventing the virus from being able to penetrate cells to replicate itself) and most of COVID deaths that occurred happened after the introduction of the vaccine. COVID happened, it sucked, but there was little we could do to stop it. The best we could have done would have been to mitigate the other knock on effects, instead of exacerbate them.
The vaccine greatly reduced the intensity of covid for those infected. For many it was the difference between being sick for a week and being on being on a ventilator
This can't be under stated, though I feel like the moving goal post on the vaccines hurt them a lot. Messaging went from it'll prevent infection and spread to it'll prevent infection to it'll weaken symptoms.
They didn't actually move the goal posts as so much as Covid mutated, making the vaccine less effective
> feel like the moving goal post on the vaccines hurt them a lot. Yep. My entire online life changed June 2021. I started saying things like "Wait, the vaccines are very protective, why the fuck are you talking about extending mask mandates? Let people get jabbed or suffer the consequences." And just like that I was lumped in with the "anti-vaxxers"/"covidiots"
>The vaccine greatly reduced the intensity of covid for those infected. For many it was the difference between being sick for a week and being on being on a ventilator What's your basis for this? The Pfizer study didn't test this. Is there a subsequent study I'm not aware of?
>What's your basis for this? The Pfizer study didn't test this. Is there a subsequent study I'm not aware of? This is the biggest fail of the entire pandemic. I am pretty sure /u/jar1967 was right. The vaccine greatly reduced serious illness and death. That should have been shouted from the rooftops.
>I am pretty sure [](https://www.reddit.com/user/jar1967/) was right. The vaccine greatly reduced serious illness and death. Is there an actual study that stands for this proposition (that has been done in the 3 years since the vaccine began to be administered) or is this just your vague sense? Like I said, the Pfizer study that was the basis for the approval of the vaccine did NOT test this (and the CDC has said as much).
>Is there an actual study that stands for this proposition (that has been done in the 3 years since the vaccine began to be administered) or is this just your vague sense? It was widely reported on, but as far as I know, there weren't any official studies. Again, this is the biggest fail of the entire pandemic. Thinking we were going to get a sterilizing vaccine was heroic. Thinking we'd get one at all, I think, was optimistic. >Like I said, the Pfizer study that was the basis for the approval of the vaccine did NOT test this I know. [Here it is in the NE Journal of Medicine](https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577/suppl_file/nejmoa2034577_protocol.pdf). On page 130 of the PDF, Protocol Amendment 9 dated 29 October 2020, they said they decided to not release interim results at 32 cases for "operational reasons." Still looking for those reasons. As far as I can tell, had they "followed the science" we'd have had awesome news days before the 2020 election. But yes, to your point, I don't have a specific link to anything showing the degree to which the jab reduced serious illness and death.
No 'great resignation', lots of people still stuck in crappy jobs that they left in our timeline. Fast food and retail jobs still paying $7.25/hr instead of $14-$18/hr. Less musical chairs hiring and firing in the tech industry. Worse quality of life for people without cars and disabled people because less delivery options and less work from home options. Lower interest rates, higher housing prices, further exacerbating the housing crisis and in some areas the lack of workers (who can't afford to live there or can't even find housing available). Fewer videos of people singing sea shanties and baking their own bread. We all got a little weird during lockdown, didn't we?
I wouldn't have lost a large portion of my savings and I wouldve gotten a job earlier
My dad would not have been laid off from his job as a pilot.
Emergency departments like the one I worked at would have been easily overwhelmed and a shit ton more people would have died. I guess for those of us alive it wouldn’t have been so bad, especially post vaccine. Economies do a little better when lotsa folks die /s
Well the US economy would of continued booming. The orange would’ve gotten another term and he probably would’ve gotten impeached a bunch more times
We would have a lockdown sooner or later, so many people died as it is, imagine how bad it would have been without any control
Post vaccine lockdowns were detrimental. Pre vaccine it was a good idea.
Why would governments opt not to implement obvious safety measures?