And for keeping hospitals from being overwhelmed; if the hospitals get overwhelmed, deaths will increase considerably, even if you exclude those caused by COVID-19. (Remember: Other causes of hospitalization don't end just because there's a major pandemic. The Spanish Flu didn't prevent soldiers from being killed on the battlefield, for example.)

Losing a job because of health issue and not being able to see your girl certainly doesn't seem trivial to me. Best of luck for 2021.

This is very sad to hear(the whole thing, not just this snipped bit)....I hope and pray your situation improves soon.

Until then, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.....if you want, feel free to spend some time with us here on the forums as we celebrate and remember the good times in our lives, and hope and wish for better times to come in the coming year. :)

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It's not that they don't help at all for any situation....just that they do more harm(economic, mental health, etc) than good....as shown by the CDC and WHO current data.

And yeah, I am mainly an introvert as well, so thankfully it hasn't impacted me much....still, I worry about those who have lost their jobs and businesses over the lockdowns.

I'd post them, but the staff might give me a "leave" for posting them.
(I might link them in my offtopic quicktopics later, though)

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Many hospitals here in NY state actually didn't even reached capacity during the worst of the illness in 2020, and NYC even sent away the hospital ship that was sent to handle overflow as it was barely being used.

That said, I heave heard that the hospitals that are getting overwhelmed aren't getting as much attention or aid(supplies,etc)...those being in more rural areas who aren't as well equipped as non-rural hospitals on average. I wish more aid would get sent their way to help out, as they seem to need it atm.

Btw, even with lockdowns, several of the more hard hit areas still had increases in case totals.

With the rural hospitals, they often cover a pretty large area. They need space and ventilators (i'm told the ventilators have very low rates of success, though) and staff. At the end of the day, only one of those things can be provided, though i blame the corporations for understaffing, because they notoriously understaff without Kung Flu.

There's actually a law against understaffing at the federal level, i believe, but they never did define what understaffing meant, so it's worthless.

I'd like to see this WHO data that says lockdowns do more harm than good. Because I can only find instances where they're saying the opposite...

I wouldn't be surprised if the same people who are against lockdowns are also against wearing masks - something that's 99.9% effective at blocking large particles.

In Europe we've been clearly told that if most people wore masks, then lockdowns or even targeted restrictions wouldn't be necessary. As in, if 95% of people wore masks instead of the actual 60%. Since people will never be so sensible, lockdowns and more commonly targeted restrictions are necessary.

But this is difficult to communicate to nationals of countries whose leadership is criminally incompetent and negligent, yet maintains popularity regardless. But hey, at least the anti-masker tiktok vids are funny.

Well, at any rate, l I hope eventually those who need treatment will be able to get it & that most stay healthy this holiday season.

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To the thread:

Anyone who wants to find the current WHO stance on lockdowns, can look up "who recommendations on lockdowns" in their search engine of choice. I got many stories listing their stance against lockdowns in the first page alone. Excerpts:

“We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Nabarro said.

“The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”

Nabarro said tight restrictions cause significant harm, particularly on the global economy.

“Lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer,” he said.

“Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition.”

Also another quote from the article:
(by Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus)

“We need to reach a sustainable situation where we have adequate control of this virus without shutting down our lives entirely, or lurching from lockdown to lockdown — which has a hugely detrimental impact on societies,” he said.

WHO also said back in January/February that one shouldn't shut down flights from China/restrict international travel (something which might have prevented the pandemic or at least mitigated it), so imo they aren't trustworthy anyway.

Article about Sweden's approach (which I find rather misguided):
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/22/sweden-coronavirus-covid-response/

Even a broken clock can be right twice a day, and the major difference here is that the financial effects of the lockdowns(much of it negative) can be seen with one's own eyes.

Seen any small businesses permanantly closed or heard about such from friends irl or online? Many of those cases are due in large part to the lockdowns....not the sickness.
(businesses usually like to remain in business, and many would likely be open if not for being told to not be open)

Sidenote: somehow a big box store like Walmart is safe(with bigger crowds), whereas a smaller store supposedly isn't......it(among other things in such lockdowns) just doesn't make any sense.

Fwiw, they(afaik) actually had decent(relatively speaking) case totals even without a ton of measures in place. So did several states that have never locked down once, btw.

In fact, most areas with strict lockdowns have decent sized INCREASES in case totals.

The pattern i'm seeing right now is that the places that had outbreaks early on are safest at the moment. They reached herd immunity early, thanks to "peaceful" protests and hugging campaigns. Now the areas that weren't hit as bad (Rural areas, since they're the ones who overvalue certain holidays) are getting it hard, thanks to everything starting since Halloween. This was reflect in China, as well, when you normalize for Chinese New Year. Right, due to what i said above. I'm sure someone will ask for a source, but to ask for a source on this instead of using your head would be bad faith: the knowledge necessary to see the obvious pattern is basic highschool-level biology in the US.

Yes, imo it's likely we might've all been better off(including less medical side issues like depression) if we isolated the vulnerable(and those who chose to do so) and let everyone else slowly build up herd immunity.

Also yeah, now we have new vaccines, but sadly also new mutations which the vaccines might not cover.
(of course hopefully some might be less lethal and/or have higher survivability & asymptomatic rates)

The problem these days(in general, for many things) is that many seem to want to have the TV and such think for them, and do less thinking for themselves.

Count in SYdney is at 116 (+ a handful.. cant find totals oddly) . 100 idiiots turning up at a beach on Xmas day had to be told to break up their gathering...apparently lot of backpackers.......Can't wait to see what the fallout is from all the people who party Xmas day and new years..........:/

It's likely if herd immunity was achieved there wouldn't be much need for lockdowns....of course to get that, people need to come into contact with others....which cannot happen easily during lockdowns. :|

(also the disease has been spreading for many months and has a very high asymptomatic rate......meaning many likely already have or had it and didn't even know)

Sidenote: The lockdowns were originally thought up and implemented to slow the spread...as in people would still get sick, but slower and over time.....it never meant that no one would ever get sick from it again.

Nice strawman. But, by all means, sources please. So they won't listen to order A, but surely they'll listen to order B whcih carries the same penalties. No, this just aggravates the populous, especially when you admit this isn't necessary because you're only doing it to apply more pressure. If the "authorities" would stop at the sophistry, the double standards (the people who called for lockdowns also went out without masks to BLM protest), outright trying to hide information from the people, it would get better. The problem is, the average person is an individualist and rightfully so, but the governments are collectivist, and their arguments reflect a disrespect for individualism, to the degree of admitting dishonesty. The authorities aren't making arguments from individualism for collectivism, which is what you would expect a government of any level of integrity to do. Instead of treating the populace as the enemy,

They're still wrong about the uncubation period. It's about 2 weeks to a month, not 2 days to 2 weeks. This even the official information from China, once they actually started working with us instead of against us. I haven't checked if the info changed, but i doubt it. The whole big thing from the beginning was it couldn't be contained very well because of the incubation period and the higher than normal asymptomatic transmission. They keep treating it like it's a flu in the west, while saying it's not (and it isn't). They are prioritizing what's good for the corporations rather than what's good for the people, which is why it's been out of control. Give the damn people time off and let the corporations suffer for their understaffing. If they had more staff, they could survive all their employees taking 2 weeks off to recover, rather than bringing them back in a week (or less) when they're still in danger of dying of the damn thing. The experts tell us all kinds of things, but the policies fly in complete conflict of the advice, which only makes compliance less likely. All the covid-nay-sayers all cite the inconsistencies.

The problem is, we don't know who the vulnerable are, and, even still, they'll have different standards for people solely on age, which isn't the case. There are genetic dispositions that COVID hits harder (the people who say race is a social construct also say that COVID is racist, but that's a whole other kettle of fish: it's actually culturalist), since it focuses on the ACE2 receptor (and some people through lifestyle and genetic factors that we don't yet understand present more of these in more cellls). We've actually got a few examples of this in the thread: my girlfriend and Lionel212008 both have brain fog, which appears to be a rare symptom that appears as a result of a higher than usual ACE2 receptors in or around neurons which causes infections that damage the brain stem. Unfortunately, in some people, this is permanent, and those who are affected the most will actually die of cardiac arrest or even ARDS without the pneumonia component causing it. This alone affects people of all ages. My girlfriend's athesma was not even considered by her work place and she was placed on the COVID hall prior to presenting any symptoms of COVID (they threw her under the bus, basically), and she's currently beyond the normal recovery time and had to have a video call with a doctor to get a work excuse, 'cause she isn't exactly herself, still (and she would've been held liable for med-errors) and she can't even really drive right now. If it were just the elderly who were in danger, I'd agree, but this is not the case. They're saying the new strains are more contagious and just as deadly. They're saying they're hoping the vaccines will work, 'cause, well, if not, we're in deep shit 'cause the original was bad enough. I can't imagine the people who got infected the first time getting any better, and imagine getting hit with both strains at the same time, along with influenza which is starting to go around. Your immune system would become too divided to function properly, regardless of what your age is. While, yes, it affects people who are older much harder, it's most definitely deadly to younger people. People in the range 20-30 are still dying, too, and it apppears to be initial viral load (how much you get before your immune system detects it and starts fighting it off) that predicts death: hispanics, who are most likely to hang out while asymptomatic (or even symptomatic) are dying disproportionately higher. Absolutely. What mkaes things worse is the TV/Internet creates information silos. What's worse is, the people who are aware of this seem to pretend they're immune, even while presenting this. You can see this most heavily from the "we need lockdowns" and "masks don't work" crowds. Lockdowns and masks have somehow been attributed to one political identity, so everyone rallies around their poles. You're guilty of this, too.

I meant more all elderly people over a certain age and those with weakened immune systems...and also possibly those with serious underlying conditions....at least that would be a start, I think.
(as well as those who want to isolate)

Btw a side note: sorry to hear about your girlfriend...you have my sympathies.

True and fair enough....still, at least i'm willing to live with my choices and not force them on others unlike some others who seem to want to have masks and lockdowns forced on everyone.
(and likely for their own benefit and safety and worries)

This is why your proposal is a problem: we've underestimated the effects on young people, and identifying the vulnerable people outside of the elderly is impractical with current technologies. In practice, we have treat everyone as vulnerable, which, as you see, the government hasn't been doing. They say that we need to, which is correct, but the policies they enact are more to your proposal (save the lockdowns which are only happening because COVID gives them the execuse to enact this abuse of power which satisfies their lusts, especially after 2016 when America told them off). But this is why we need to separate the two policies. As i said both in private, and possibly here, the masking is not perfect, but it works. Much of the anti-masking propaganda is BS. I know from experience of wearing masks for 8-hour shifts prior to COVID that they do not have the claimed effects. To the contrary, many people who are into weight lifting and stuff intentionally wear masks for the purpose of restricting their breathing to improve their "cardio."

Meanwhile, the lockdowns have done little to nothing positive, but have cost us alot, including trust. I don't know how anyone can expect the regular people to care about masking when the authorities are clearly being tyrannical. I just wish people would at least comply with the masking, but I can understand why people don't, at this point. The average person, anymore, doesn't think for themselves or educate themselves, so it's alot easier to lump things like this together.