Zero Covid may actually be plausible for small, isolated island nations with limited entry points, like NZ, even without locking everyone inside their homes like in China.
And it's probably wise for countries to be using COVID as a test run for something worse. We live in the age of pandemics now, and will probably get hit by something worse eventually. Something like an airborne Ebola strain (50% mortality) or airborne Rabies strain (100% mortality) are going to require a rapid, whole-of-society response to shut it down. If anything like that happens, the US and other countries that made a complete wreck of our response are going to be fucked.
> Zero Covid may actually be plausible for small, isolated island nations with limited entry points, like NZ, even without locking everyone inside their homes like in China.
So why doesn't Japan and Sri Lanka and Hong Kong and Taiwan and every island Caribbean/Pacific nation not have limited zero-COVID policies right now? It works right? The data shows Delta is still kicking.
At least be honest they made a very serious gamble with their citizen's freedoms, the economic well being of the poor, and the livelihood of small businesses and it didn't work. And every time a compromise is made in the future it will be easier to make the second time.
You can argue it might have worked, people were scared, they were working with limited information, the media cheered them on for acting boldly, etc, etc. But that's how we evolve. We learn from mistakes. Which is critically important for discourse going forward.
Pretty much everyone here lives in dense areas like the rest of the world. Limited entry points probably helped though, and being small more to do with faster, more regional decisions rather than the China way of there is COVID? Lock everything down.
>If anything like that happens, the US and other countries that made a complete wreck of our response are going to be fucked.
A 50% or 100% mortality rate would keep even the most pro-liberty people home. The issue is that COVID was nowhere near the civilization killer that is was made out to be. Some countries/states recognized this and rightly decided to not lock society down.
The problem is, COVID19 was essentially a zero-day, an exploit against human physiology we had never seen in the wild before, and didn't know how bad it would be in foresight.
Any response to a novel outbreak that spreads rapidly, like COVID, needs to err on the side of caution initially, until we have better knowledge of the short and long term effects.
And it wasn't a civilization killer, but US excess mortality rate during COVID exceeded total US deaths of WWII, among other great cullings. It was worth taking seriously and striving for a competent response.
And it's probably wise for countries to be using COVID as a test run for something worse. We live in the age of pandemics now, and will probably get hit by something worse eventually. Something like an airborne Ebola strain (50% mortality) or airborne Rabies strain (100% mortality) are going to require a rapid, whole-of-society response to shut it down. If anything like that happens, the US and other countries that made a complete wreck of our response are going to be fucked.