I'm trying to look at the long-term, and it seems to me the damage done by the lockdowns will far outweigh the number of people who would otherwise have been killed. And yes, I'm probably one of those.
Without lockdowns, the death total would be maybe 50 million.
In saving those people, what we've done is remove any chance of a concerted effort to stop the next pandemic, which could be the really deadly one that might cause a billion deaths. People have lost faith in politicians' ability to manage pandemics, be it due to blatant corruption in UK, Fauci flip-flops in USA, or insanely long lockdowns for no purpose in NZ in late 2021, long after the vast majority of people had been vaccinated.
Science seems to regard it as a given that there will be another pandemic, and if it's one with a death rate 5, 10, or even 20 times higher than Covid, we're in deep ****. (...)
Thanks for squarely answering my somewhat …ehm, direct question! …But I still don’t follow follow the reasoning in your answer, the long-term thing.
My starting point is that human life, particular large numbers of human lives, takes precedence over anything and everything else. So that, if in saving large numbers of human lives, the economy takes a hit, well then so be it; because the economy’s there to serve us, we’re not instruments to prop up the economy!
(Sure, your argument might make sense in the very poorest countries, in Africa maybe, where many people lead a barely-subsistent existence, so that a knock to the economy might mean real deaths. So that, going all out to save the old and the infim, in those specific countries, might effectively mean having babies and children and people generally dying eventually. So that there what you say might make sense. …But in first world countries, that’s not an issue. The economy can stand a hit, it
has stood a hit, without droves of people dropping down dead from malnutrition and disease. So, in regular first-world countries, in countries that are not completely subsistence level, all of these measures to save lives were good and right, and exactly what was called for.)
Following from that starting point, your argument does not make sense. I mean, agreed about the corruption and mismanagement and all of that, and if you’re asking for the likes of Trump, as well as others indulging in gross mismanagement and outright corruption, to be locked away, then sure, by all means. But the principle of the thing itself, and by and large what was done despite all of this, was sound; and, as you admit, it did save large numbers of lives! So that’s how it should be!
So if some of the “public” completely disagrees with what was done, then that is either irrational of them; or else it is psychotic of them (in as much as they value their own relatively trivial creature comforts, and temporary discomfort and inconvenience and economic hit and all of that, more than the actual lives and deaths of large numbers of their older and/or less healthy fellow humans, fellow countrymen. That’s, I mean, s-i-c-k sick; and if someone follows that sick reasoning to downplay
future pandemics, …well, I mean, I don't think we can rightly argue that therefore we should have pandered to them when Covid was raging on! It simply makes no sense at all, no matter how you slice it. (And let me emphasize, I understand now from what you’ve said to me, that you’re not arguing this yourself, but only going by what “those people” say, and how think “those people” will react next time.)
Effort should be focused on educating the irrational and the ignorant. Effort should be focused on making clear to the psychotic that their complete lack of empathy is not acceptable. No effort should be made to pander to their irrationality, and their psychopathy and lack of empathy. …Because, I mean, wtf, how does that even make sense?! …And where do you stop? If we pander to the weirdos and, to appease their ignorance and irrationality and lack of empathy, had we allowed for X extra deaths this time that might have been prevented; well then, if and when there’s a next time, and the numbers then are maybe 2X or even 5X, well what has changed, might they not take the same irrational and/or empathy-less approach to that other, higher number as well? …And again, how do you even predict these number will be beforehand for something completely new?!
…Sorry, your argument, your underlying position, simply does not make sense to me!
