Regardless of which side you’re on I think everyone needs to be willing to engage in civil discourse. We’re more divided than ever and should actively work to fix it.
It’s true that some people are anti lockdown and there may be merit. There may not be.
The truth is we won’t know for a few years until we have more information.
There's no debate to be had with blatant incorrect facts
This is not about "maybe the person is right" or "these are debatable" it's about A > B but being claimed otherwise with one of the numbers being in TFA to push an agenda
There are ways to correct inaccurate facts that don't lower discourse. Adding a pithy comment to the end of a correction is not productive and only serves to add emotion and tribalism to the discussion. Adding a source for the data helps too since there's no reason to believe one set of data over another if they're both unsourced. This instead invites tribalism to be the determinate of which set of data is correct and ignores the possibility that both are wrong.
No, the truth is immediately apparent, and the post you're replying to is mentioning part of it: we know how many people died, and have good enough data on causes. Lockdowns caused some deaths, with alcoholism being part of it. It also saved quite a few lives by reducing the number of traffic accidents. And no matter how you slice it, nothing comes close to the number of actual COVID deaths, let alone the number of deaths we would have seen if we had let the first waves infect everyone. That would have been abut 5x as much, or 1.5 million, not including the problem that medical care and the economy would have completely collapsed in such a scenario.
Anyway... "let's wait until we have all the data" has been my favorite losing argument starting in like week 5 of the pandemic, when the deaths started mounting in Sweden.
> [Lockdowns] also saved quite a few lives by reducing the number of traffic accidents.
Not in the US, they didn't. Traffic deaths in 2020 were around 7% higher than in 2019, after a multi-decade general downtrend. There were more traffic deaths in 2021 than in any year since 2007.
Final tabulation isn't ready for 2021, but from the first 9 months' figure 2021 was on pace to be materially higher than even 2020 was.
> That would have been abut 5x as much, or 1.5 million
Is this some sort of scientific fact or your opinion?
Frankly if you look at say the death rate difference between Florida, Texas (hardly any lockdowns), and California, or New york, your 5x number makes no sense. There were nowhere near 5x as many deaths in Florida, despite an older population.
Peru had massive lockdowns, and they've topped the deaths per million list. Australia are creeping up the list despite being locked down the no covid, and fully vaccinated.
China are struggling to keep omicron under control with lockdowns. Their death rate will probably rise a lot soon.
It is not at all obvious that lockdowns do actually help with the death rate.
In what alternate universe did Texas have “hardly any lockdowns?” They shut down restaurants, bars, gyms, social events just like everywhere else.
And yes it is obvious (derivable from germ theory) that lockdowns are effective at slowing the spread of disease exactly in proportion to how complete/total/rigid the lockdowns are. Whether they were worth the cost is obviously more complex to answer.
It’s true that some people are anti lockdown and there may be merit. There may not be.
The truth is we won’t know for a few years until we have more information.