You’ve shown several times that you simply don’t understand and are uninterested in learning the actual reasons behind lockdowns. The reasons for lockdowns have always been the same: to slow transmission of the disease so that it doesn’t threaten to destroy the ability of our hospitals to function. That’s what mitigation measures do.ajax18 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 29, 2021 8:12 pmThat's the same reason they gave for the lockdowns initially. Then that accelerated to locdown until eradication and an excuse for more welfare.The primary reason for mandating masks now is to avoid overrunning health care facilities.
Thete will always be another variant and maybe even 6500 caualries per year indefinitely.At some point in the future, there won’t be enough COVID patients requiring an ICU bed at the same time or facilities will be extended until there are.
The problem is pretty simple math. We have a relatively small supply of unused ICUs and trained personnel to staff them. There is some slack, but empty ICU beds don’t make money and keeping excess ICU staff around twiddling their thumbs isn’t profitable. That’s a totally expected result of for profit medicine.
Absent mitigation measures, COVID cases increase exponentially. As do COVID hospitalizations and ICU use. If you wait until ICU beds are full to take any steps, the number of patients who need ICU beds will overshoot the supply substantially. You can’t snap your fingers and instantly turn an exponential rate of increase into a decrease.
If you’d been paying attention, infectious disease specialists warned from the first lockdowns that mitigation was not a long term solution. There is a way to keep the transmission rate low enough to prevent hospital overruns without resorting to lockdowns. That way is the bedrock foundation of public health: test, isolate, trace, quarantine. But they require discipline and a willingness to cooperate: something Americans are short of these days. People who had symptoms refused to isolate, people who tested positive refused to isolate. People who tested positive refused to cooperate with contract tracing, and people identified as close contacts refused to quarantine. Because “freedom,” lots of people sabotaged the only way we could have gotten through the pandemic without either lockdowns or a decimated hospital system.
Then, we got what was essentially a scientific miracle. Two companies were able to use a new technique of making vaccines to deliver effective vaccines in an amazingly short period of time. And other effective vaccines followed them. But, because people had let their politics override simple common sense, they refused the free, easy way to significantly cut the rate of transmission of the disease. The people who prayed for a miracle got one, but too many chose to reject the miracle based on political demagoguery.
Yes, there will likely be more variants, but they will have to out complete delta. The next variant to do that will likely be more transmissible, but could easily cause milder disease. Nobody knows. So this gloom and doom forecast of yours has no basis in reality.
Our ability to get through this as quickly as practice depends on all of us working together against the disease. You’ve been promoting practices since the beginning that have resulted in more disease, more deaths, and protracted lockdowns. If you want to be free of mandatory restrictions, put your politics aside, do everything you can to slow the rate of transmission, encourage others to do the same, and stop whining about conditions you’ve helped to create.
