What exactly do you mean by "actually locked down"? That 100% of the population would be prohibited from leaving their homes? What about food? What about medical emergencies? What about a house burning down or a tree falling on the roof? What if a watermain bursts? There are endless edge cases that keep the virus around so when the lockdown ends, all you've done is delayed host exposure a bit. And this ignores the possibility of animals serving as reservoirs of the virus. It also ignores multi-family housing. What if most of the people on the 3rd floor have COVID the first week and then it spreads to the 4th floor the next week, the 5th floor the next, and so on? Now you have people exiting the lockdown who have just been infected and can spread it all over the place.
The only thing a lockdown can do is slow things down in order to have time to get more prepared. The notion that the virus can be extinguished by lockdowns simply is not workable. It's an idea that is attractive because it's simple but only because it ignores the logistic realities of a planet with nearly eight billion people, or on the national level, 330 million people.
Except, like, where it's worked. Australia, New Zealand, parts of South East Asia.
Just last week Brisbane Australia had a small outbreak of 3-4 people. We locked down the whole city/region for 3 days to allow contact tracing to occur.
We've now relaxed those controls again but are preventing groups of 20+ people from gathering.
You also must wear masks in all venues where possible, including public transport.
It fucking works. The fact that other western countries haven't been successful is nothing to do with the method but the implementation.
It also helps we force interstate and international travellers to enter quarantine for 14 days. But when I'm hearing friends families in Texas going to Prague for Christmas, and didn't have to quarantine when they arrived OR when they went home. Is it that much of a surprise the US and Europe is in such a fucking state?
Edit: just to add another reference to larger lock downs. Brisbane or the state of Queensland has previously had lock downs that went for months previously while we sought to prevent community transmission. Now for the last 4 months we've literally gone back to normal besides international holidays. Pubs reopened. Cafes opened. No restrictions. Dancing in night clubs. No masks.
Sure, when you have a group of people willing to go along with a lock down.
When it was suggested in the U.S., xenophobia quickly accompanied it.
Do the rich lock down? Nope. Look at how the athletes, people in power, and other celebrities do things when no one is watching. Rules for the little people.
Yeah, I get that. Willingness to trust the method gets you the results. We went (Australia) pretty hard on ensuring people were held accountable (e.g huge fines, charges and gaol time for
L those breaking lock down).
Edit: on accountability, the rich were also stopped. I can't recall the gentleman but a billionaire on his private yacht back during the biggest part of lock down bounced between states on the east coast last year.
When Queensland Police found out, they went to his yacht and forced him into hotel quarantine for the duration that everyone else is expected to.
There are exceptions. Some other billionaires and wealthy members of society have sought exceptions to quarantine at home. But even then it was with the caveat that they are willing to pay for 24/7 surveillance from security/police to ensure compliance.
You are an island. Our borders are porous. Sure, you can lock down and know that no one is sneaking across your borders. Sab Francisco locks down, and someone drives in from out of town and keeps the spread going.
The island excuse is getting old. Is there any evidence that “national border crossing by land only” was a significant source of spread, compared to community spread and air travel? On the contrary, there are non-islands that also were able to significantly slow the spread using actual lockdowns. And there were islands that did not control the spread due to not implementing lockdowns (UK). It doesn’t seem like Island is a really significant factor.
Even with that, we had controls on state lines, country boundaries and county boundaries. Literal army check points on these state lines during the harshest lock downs.
There's a reason why the Melbourne/Victorian outbreak which was the worst we've seen in Australia was kept to that city. Noting that exceptions were managed, we still allowed domestic travel for freight and similar so food and goods were still received and sent albeit with delays.
I'm not suggesting the US, Europe and other countries would been as successful as we have been. It's too difficult to say. But what I am saying, is the US and Europe didn't even fucking try.
One thing Australia does have in its favour, is every single state has its own separate state ran government. And each state held others accountable, there's been a lot of political mud slinging but our states enforced those borders and enforced them well. Where the Federal government did the same for international borders (with less success than state borders, e.g New South Wales and Federal Government made a mess of the Ruby Princess:
https://theconversation.com/ruby-princess-inquiry-blames-nsw...).
As I mentioned in my grand fathered comment. An anecdote for sure, but I know of people who literally went to Europe from the US for a holiday over the 2020/2021 Christmas. Little to no controls were used. This is why Covid was and is spreading. There's absolutely no desire for either Europe or the US to stop international travellers and Covid spreading events.
I was galled to find the UK didn't make international travel even difficult until the more/highly infectious UK Covid variant came to be and that was only in the last few months. What the fuck was happening prior to then?
I am sympathetic. Countries like Spain have been economically destroyed by Covid because they're so reliant on tourism.
Australia's regions where tourism is the largest part of the local GDP (Far North Queensland, Cairns as an example) are really struggling and even with the Federal Government printing money like there's no tomorrow. That relief is being wound down and it's now starting to bite. But even here we provided more support to business and local people more than what I've seen from other countries internationally.
It's appalling really. There just seems so little appetite from people on the ground or the countries ruling parties to commit to lock down and providing financial support to their workers so they can afford to not go to work.
But, I abhore the 'what you did wouldn't work here' rhetoric. It's bullshit. No one fucking tried.
Anyone pushing a univariate theory of virology, sociology, and economics in the context of a globalized economy of 8 billion people is pushing simpleton pseudoscience
> That 100% of the population would be prohibited from leaving their homes? What about food? What about medical emergencies? What about a house burning down or a tree falling on the roof? What if a watermain bursts?
Other countries actually addressed those questions. The most stringent example is china: They restricted everyone to their immediate neighborhood, then delivered food and other essential goods to each neighborhood in a centrally planned system. Medical emergencies were allowed to leave a neighborhood and drive to the nearest hospital.
You don't need 100%. There are parts of the world that have contained the virus (and may have eradicated it) even though essential services operated, even though people were permitted to leave their homes. Of course it can come back into those regions, but managing the spread is much less difficult once numbers are low enough for tracing. It becomes an exercise in public health regulations and targeted shutdowns.
The other question is: what are the alternatives? We didn't even have a vaccine prior to December. Now that we have a vaccine, there are the logistics of immunising everyone willing. Once the willing are immunised, we don't know whether it will be enough to stop the spread and mutation of the virus. On the other hand, ignoring the problem won't protect the economy. High absenteeism due to illness or self-imposed isolation of high risk individuals are the best we can hope for. There are far worse scenarios. Ignoring the problem won't protect the health care system. Even if it could handle the increased numbers without impacting mortality rate due to covid, many procedures could not be undertaken since the risk of infection would impact the outcome of those procedures.
The reality is that we are in a difficult situation. There is no perfect solution, simply solutions that improve outcomes. While vaccination may be a better long term solution, it is not a 100% solution. Also, the simplicity of lockdowns is about more than having time to get more prepared. It is about making the situation manageable. May it be through vaccination or isolation, creating a manageable situation is the key component to eradication.
The only thing a lockdown can do is slow things down in order to have time to get more prepared. The notion that the virus can be extinguished by lockdowns simply is not workable. It's an idea that is attractive because it's simple but only because it ignores the logistic realities of a planet with nearly eight billion people, or on the national level, 330 million people.