Worth Considering
Why Lockdowns Failed Where Targeted Protection Could Work
The Washington Post recently reported that Israel, Spain, and France crushed COVID-19 but now have higher infection rates than the US. (Read the article here.)
But the conclusion drawn from these facts is wrong. What you don’t want to do is a broad lockdown. You want to aggressively quarantine the vulnerable and allow the virus to spread as quickly as possible among those that have little to no chance of dying from it… basically, anyone under 45 that has no co-morbidities.
The reason this more-sensible and less-stringent policy wasn’t the one we followed – except in a few countries like Sweden – is because the WHO, the CDC, and the political leaders believed it wouldn’t work. The population couldn’t be trusted to follow guidelines. It was preferable to scare the hell out of everyone and then use that fear to shut down the country.
We know now that we can’t defeat the virus by shelter-in-place mandates. Putting people indoors only makes things worse. We also know, as I pointed out in March, that we can’t defeat the virus by social distancing and wearing masks. Those measures are designed to slow the speed at which the virus spreads. I predicted that the infection would continue to “return” until we had achieved herd immunity – either from a vaccine or naturally or both.
And that’s what’s happening now. Cities and countries that “escaped” the spike in March and April began experiencing high rates of infection in the summer, and we’re having a third wave now.
My bet is that the death rate will end up being about the same everywhere, regardless of lockdown measures. And that might be about 70 deaths per 100,000 – or 0.0007%.