Belligerent Savant » 03 Feb 2022 23:31 wrote:Joe Hillshoist » Thu Feb 03, 2022 12:29 am wrote:Belligerent Savant » 01 Feb 2022 10:30 wrote:.
There's at least 1 person in here that continues to hold firm to the canard that lockdowns were beneficial. Or however he currently chooses to frame it.Johns Hopkins, January 2022: “While lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. [They] are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”
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https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files ... tality.pdf
Cannard my arse. Where I lived they worked. Stickdog even posted a graph illustrating exactly that they worked, even tho he didn't realise it at the time.
Ha - good to see you were game for a bit of ribbing.
Lockdowns may well have worked, for a period of time.
But as with most things, on a long enough timeline efficacy (along with cost vs benefit) will wane and/or turn negative, especially when social constructs are heavily altered.
I'm always game for good-natured shit stirring. (That doesn't include being called a zealot or a cop lover tho.)
I've said this before but honestly ... were lockdowns worth it? I dunno its not as simple as yes or no.
Firstly did you see how clean the world looked in those early months of 2020. How weird it was out here not seeing planes in the sky, especially at night. People seeing the Himalayas from Kashmir for the first time in 30 or 40 years. Seismic noise decreasing because of the lack of road traffic. Aquatic life coming back to Venice.
When our economy stopped the rest of the world, the non human bit, started recovering. So I'll bet Earth (Gaia whatever) - our home - thought it was worth it.
Anyway...
In Australia we were able to control entry into the country. If we'd done a better job we wouldn't have had an outbreak. But as it was we still controlled outbreaks and prevented death. There were lots of short lockdowns outside of Melbourne.
The Sydney one failed when the Delta outbreak started but .... Sydney has some real class divisions, especially geographically. The East and The North are full of toffs.
Anyway when Delta started the "lockdown" in Sydney's east and north included leaving Gucci and David Jones stores open because they were "essential" but when it spread to the poorer south-western areas they sent the cops and at one point I think they sent the army in to curtail movement. By then it was too late, if they'd locked down properly early when the outbreak was in the eastern and northern suburbs then it might have been stopped. And by properly I just mean don't leave the fucken Gucci shop oipen. We don't need to buy handbags and crap.
By September in Melbourne people were ignoring the lockdown unless they wanted to follow it and except in rare case cops weren't enforcing it. This was when all that stuff about started coming out about Melbourne and the police state.
So ... I doubt another lockdown would have worked, although in Melbourne now there seems to be a voluntary one while this Omicron outbreak happens. Butr that's not everyone obviously. Most people had had enough and its not like the people running the show were pulling their weight or even being competent most of the time.
I agree with the bolded. But it was never meant to be a permanent thing. We talk about the Melbourne lockdowns as if they were the only thing but shorter ones associated with small outbreaks in alot of other places stopped the outbreaks and didn't impose the same levels of social stress.
So I still think they work but have limits and only work within those limits.