Lockdowns are not the key to solving a pandemic, though many are still defending the idea.
Just today, a new model gained tremendous attention with a claim that many more would have died without lockdowns.
A model. They will forever claim this. Some people just cannot let go.
If we learn from history, the answer is not complicated. In general, it is the same one used in 2014, 2009, 2003, 1984, 1969, 1958, 1942, and 1929, and even 1918 in most places, among other periods. Don’t panic. Public health should investigate and communicate the properties of the pathogen, its spread, prevalence, and severity. Experiment to find the best therapeutics. Go to the doctor if you get too sick. Let our immune systems work and allow herd immunity to develop through normal social functioning, while urging the most vulnerable to stay safe and wait it out.
This is what we always did in the US. Two years ago was different. We tried a new theory and practice and it flopped, catastrophically. Worse, dissenting scientists were aggressively censored, attacked, and smeared, and this happened (we now know) on order from above. It was a time when the only approved science was government science, an experience on par with that which dominated totalitarian countries in the 20th century.
For eons, the presence of disease has been deployed as a cover for despotism, segregation, stigmatization, and even war. It happened in the ancient world and all through the modern era too. Somehow, some way, some countries cobbled together a social contract concerning what we would and would not do during a crisis. That contract was just shredded. We need to put it together again. We are nowhere near coming to terms with the relationship between freedom as we understand it and the presence of pathogens in society.
