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I guess it depends on your definition of "mass deaths"

The US has 500k deaths so far, I consider that pretty massive.

Lockdown _did_ eliminate covid in New Zealand, so there are examples both ways.

It's pretty clear that there's a spectrum of lockdowns and their effectiveness. Personally I would rather you all stayed home for 2 weeks rather than sacrifice my grandparents for the economy.

The lockdowns in much of the western world were pretty weak overall. So many caveats and exceptions. It was "lockdown except for that which is _too_ inconvenient for my voting base"




https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5... found "Rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people.". https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.6043... found "Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate."

The lockdowns didn't help your grandparents at all, all they did was destroy the lives of many young people and business owners, and plunge over a hundred million people worldwide into extreme poverty: https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-health-ap-top-news-addi....

> Personally I would rather you all stayed home for 2 weeks rather than sacrifice my grandparents for the economy.

If you think the life of your grandparents is worth more than a hundred million people in poor countries being able to put food on their table, you're incredibly selfish.


The US didn't have a lockdown and the economy wasn't ruined by shelter in place. It was ruined because nobody wants to go to a restaurant if they might get sick - this would've happened even without public health restrictions.

Luckily, CARES aid was so effective it actually reduced poverty.




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