> It does undeniably exhibit PRE-SYMPTOMATIC spread however.

Yes, I mostly agree with this characterization.

> There is absolutely no way for you to prove this nor for me to disprove it, which tells you about its explanatory value. I personally find it much more likely that the dropoff in cases is purely explainable by timing; NY was already rounding the bend when it enforced its (IMO pseudoscientific and deleterious) measures.

There are multiple studies that support my assertion (that lockdowns reduce R0 and without them cases continue growing at near-exponential rates). Thanks to a wide variety of government policies, we have reasonable sample sizes. See for example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7268966/ (longitudinal) and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7293850/ (correlational). So yes, I'd argue your assertion here is wrong and there's strong evidence to state that.

> Basically everywhere in the globe, including Sweden, showed a large uptick for some time followed by a peak and wind-down.

This is a misconception. While not as extreme as other places, Sweden did implement social distancing measures. And you're actually incorrect about the shape of sweden's case count graph. It went up, paused, went up again a month later, and then went down some.

You can argue all kinds of things about herd immunity and whatnot, but that's not well supported. From the evidence we have the only conclusion you can make is that lockdowns do work in reducing spread, and they keep spread low later. That's the only conclusion based in evidence. Anything else is based on conjecture about things unseen.

> My guess is not good pre-existing Vitamin D3 levels exacerbated by being directed to stay inside, combined with stress, fear, lack of exercise and lost sleep attributable to lockdown + general hysteria, and finally the aforementioned iatrogenic harm caused by excessive ventilation.

Like this. This is not supported by any evidence. It was possible to go outside, it was possible to exercise. Stress and fear would be raised independent of lockdown measures. You're being just as hysterical about stay at home orderers as you accuse lawmakers of being about covid.

> I have a lot of trouble believing in a bunch of anecsotsl cases of people on Twittwr with very obvious political leanings, given that most long haulers I have seen are in popupations with next to no risk or SARS-2. It’s much more likely to be that the 20-something year olds are either inducing psychosomatic symptoms, or exaggerating their actual symptoms, or coincidentally got Epstein-Barr virus or similar at the same time.

I generally agree that long haulers are probably at least somewhat exaggerated, but we have indisputable evidence that serious, but non-fatal cases cause long lasting side effects in many (most!) severe patients (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02598-6). If that eventually wears off, that's good, but until we understand these things further, we should be cautious. A disease with a .4% IFR is very different than one with a .4% IFR and a 2% or 5% chance of leaving you with lifelong severe breathing problems, and there's a reasonable chance that Covid-19 is the second and not the first.