- This is what we know: if you confine people in their houses you can slow the spread of the virus, prevent hospitals from being overburdened. Right?
- Yes.
- But once people are released from their homes, if the disease has not been eradicated by a policy of testing of the population, isolation of the infected, tracking of their contacts, they will infect each other as if there had been no lockdown at all. Can that possibly be true?
- Seems so. The experts say so.
- And there is the example of Sweden, which has no lockdown, only a voluntary minimalization of going into public, with the idea that 'herd immunity' will develop as people are infected and recover with an immunity which becomes a barrier to the disease spreading.
- I've been closely following what is happening in Sweden.
- No disaster. So far.
- No.
- So what we have, in the absence of testing, isolation, and tracking - the United States to date has tested less than one percent of its population* - after the hospitals have been relieved, is a jump to repression without any justification.
- If the lockdown is long enough to outlast the incubation period and time to recovery, which might be 6 or even 8 weeks, then won't the people when they are released from their houses have herd immunity?
- Yes, if they were locked down having already been infected. And if that is true, why the lockdown? What have people to risk going into the public if everyone already has the disease?
- You believe then that, with no clear justification for the lockdown, absent the testing, isolation, and tracking, and the huge economic, social, and psychological cost involved, the obvious explanation is governments seeing and taking advantage of an opportunity for repression.
- It looks that way.
- Why do governments want to repress? Ok, I know your answer: power madness on the part of the leaders, and for big business that buys the leaders an opportunity for increased monopolization and control of markets as smaller businesses and individuals go bankrupt.**
Watch:
COVID-19 In Sweden
Further Reading:
Lockdown
The Data Is In
Disease Control
In the Time of COVID-19
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* Germany, population 83 million, has tested 80%. See: The US needs an 'army' of contact tracers if there's any hope of getting back to normal. Joke going around: What borders on idiocy? Canada and Mexico.
** Drug Store chains Walgreens and CVS Health are reported to be already trying to buy out rival independent pharmacies.
