I want to be very clear from the outset, I do not deny the risks of COVID. I've never done so, not in my comment history or in my own mind. It is very dangerous, and it needs to be treated as such. People who claim it is as dangerous as the flu are misinformed or deliberately trying to minimize the danger. My base position has always been that COVID-19 is dangerous, but danger exists in contexts not vacuums. Those are my strong beliefs which are strongly held. Now the rest of your points address my strong beliefs, weakly held. So, we will dive into those.

I didn't pretend that demographics is important. Demographics _is_ important. I didn't mean to say it was the _only_ factor. My main point was to demonstrate that nobody has convincingly rejected the null hypothesis in any of these response models. My point was that I can posit a reasonable theory that there is correlation between age demographics and COVID deaths/known cases. You (rightly) pointed out a country that has terrible demographics for my theory did fine. The key here is that _both can be true_. Everyone seems to be looking for a panacea when, thus far, one simply does not exist. The lockdown approach has contradictions as well, so if you profusely reject my demographic argument, you can't strongly hold on to lockdowns. We are talking about a disease, that while a relatively "normal" coronavirus, is still novel. And we are comparing responses across nations with wildly different cultures, densities, demographics, health care systems, travel levels, living situations and access to testing. My point is that maybe it was _just_ lockdowns that helped Vietnam. And may it wasn't just the lack of lockdowns that hurt the United States. We need to consider all explanations. And for the record, I do consider lockdowns a valuable tool at times!

Regarding the good will argument. Again you pointed at one location with one culture to imply that it would be widely supported elsewhere. While culturally Australia is probably closer to the United States than any other nation, there are still very key differences. The Australia lookdowns are really interesting for that reason though, that it is culturally similar to the United States. But, and I may be wrong, the lockdowns were limited to Victoria, and were not applied blanketly across their nation. This is not in contradiction to my beliefs. I have posted in the past about the idea that my state locked down _too soon_ before there was community spread. Essentially, we locked down when things were bad in New York. A lot of the opposition to lockdowns in the United States is the blanket approach in which they are applied. Counties with zero of few cases are locked down with the same vigor as metropolitan areas where cases are exploding. People rightly wonder why they can't go to work when the outbreak is across the state. I have always thought very targeted lockdowns would be a reasonable approach.

Furthermore, your points regarding Italy and France supporting lockdowns is rather interesting as well. First, both are far more collectivist than the United States in general. This isn't good or bad, it is a different culture that approaches problems in a different way. It just so happens that viewing the whole as or more important than the individual lends itself to restrictions in the benefit of the whole. The United States traditionally indexes on the individual above the whole (argument being that each individual adds to the whole, so the effect is the same). I am not here to argue individualism vs. collectivism but I will say that the issue is more complex than "Americans don't believe in science" (this may be a straw man, I don't think you've made that argument, but I tangented myself). The other point is that as lockdowns eased, cases rose. So what does that tell us? Two things...

First, it tells us that lockdowns do suppress spread (no shit). You keep people from interacting, and diseases spread through interaction are reduced. Abstinence is also the best way to prevent HIV. It is a truism that lockdowns reduce spread. And I would never argue against that (my argument is that it isn't _just_ lockdowns). But more importantly, it tells us that lockdowns must be maintained in order to continue to reduce spread. The "anti-lockdown" argument is that the time period required to actually _prevent_ deaths (not delay) is too long. It is effectively until 60%+ of the community have received a vaccine (this is ignoring heterogeneity in mixing and travel). A two-week lockdown is absolutely pointless unless at the end of those two weeks everyone is vaccinated. A two-week lockdown just delays the spread.

Now you may be saying, "Mr. salmon30salmon, the goal is not to prevent infection but to reduce strain on hospitals" and I would respond, great! I agree! It is important, even critical, to ensure hospitals are not strained. So why is _that_ not a metric we are chasing? I get the delay, 7-12 days from being infected to being hospitalized, so by the time hospitals are full you are rightly fucked as the next 7-12 days worth of people come in. But as shitty as our models have been, they are somewhat accurate in that timeframe. I support a lockdown for localities where the local hospital is nearing capacity. That makes sense.

Which brings me to the third (maybe final? this is stream of consciousness so we will see) argument. By which metrics are you saying Iowa is worse off than any European country. Let us look at the data, the source of truth in times of madness. All of my data will be from either worldometer or the Bing Covid dashboard.

Iowa:

- There are currently 84,772 active cases (or 27,345 per M)

- Deaths per 1M population: 666

- Tests per 1M population: 359,387

- Cases per 1M population (identified): 62,970

- Positive Test Rate: 17%

- Population of Iowa: 3.1 Million

- Total Case Projection (using a 10x median from Nature[1]: 620,970 * 3.1 = 1.925 Million cases

- Death Projection for ACTIVE identified cases (84,772) (lets take the best best IFR of .6%) = 508

- IFR based on projections: (666 * 3.1) + 508 / 1.925 Million = .13%

- IFR based solely on identified cases: 1%

France:

- There are currently 1,891,592 active cases (or 29,101 per 1M)

- Deaths per 1M population: 792

- Tests per 1M population: 296,031

- Cases per 1M population (identified): 31,935

- Positive Test Rate: 10%

- Population of France: 65.3 Million

- Total Case Projection (using a 10x median from Nature[1]: 31,935 * 65.3 = 19.24 Million cases

- Death Projection for active identified cases (lets take the best best IFR of .6%) = 11,349

- IFR based on projections: (792 * 65.3) + 11,349 / 19.24 Million = .32%

- IFR based solely on identified cases: 2.4%

This was all napkin math, so it may be wrong. But between those two, who is fairing better? I would rather live in Iowa, if my only decision point was COVID risk. Iowa has tested more people (35% of their population!). Thus, more cases have been identified. So based solely on cases, Iowa is doing worse. Now it wasn't fair to apply the 10x to both France and Iowa. Iowa has probably identified more than 10% of their cases due to heavier testing. But that doesn't make it any better for France. That would increase the IFR for Iowa most likely, but not three fold to .32%. Even the identified case IFR is worse for France with 2.4% vs 1%. Even with 5x unidentified Iowa beats France with an IFR of .27%

If I were a decision maker, I would emulate Iowa (limited lockdowns if any, masks encouraged, less dense cities). But this is against my thesis, that one size does not fit all. France is more dense in her cities, has more multi-generational living etc. What works (or didn't work) for France won't work for Iowa. That is why I argue against blanket lockdowns

<3 Salmon30Salmon

[1]
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18272-4