Yes or No: COVID mandates and restrictions were the biggest overreaction in history

Strong yes. I've never seen a hysteria like this in my life, and pray I never will again.

500k excess deaths. One could argue the mitigation efforts were not perfect, but they definitely were not the biggest overreaction in history.

The hysteria from the COVID denier-fearmongers already a bigger overreaction!

In the long run, this was terribly mismanaged. Because of variants, we're going to be forced to just vaccinate/isolate the "most vulnerable," and call it good. Which is what we could have done in the first place.

And now, when we have another similar situation in another year or ten, it's going to be a major NO from everyone.

This is Jim Kiler wrote:

In the long run, this was terribly mismanaged. Because of variants, we're going to be forced to just vaccinate/isolate the "most vulnerable," and call it good. Which is what we could have done in the first place.

And now, when we have another similar situation in another year or ten, it's going to be a major NO from everyone.

If we had a vaccine "in the first place," maybe. Absent a vaccine there is no effective way to isolate the vulnerable. Countries tried and failed.

Absolutely yes.

The lockdowns, loss of jobs, suicides, mental health issues, kids missing out on education, families being torn apart. Not worth it for a virus with a 99.5% recovery rate.

It's a conditional YES.

We should have quarantined the very vulnerable until vaccines were developed and allowed the rest of the world to continue turning.

Yes, a major OCD type overreaction that did almost nothing.

Jaco Again wrote:

It's a conditional YES.

We should have quarantined the very vulnerable until vaccines were developed and allowed the rest of the world to continue turning.

Impossible to do. See: Sweden.

Harambe wrote:

This is Jim Kiler wrote:

In the long run, this was terribly mismanaged. Because of variants, we're going to be forced to just vaccinate/isolate the "most vulnerable," and call it good. Which is what we could have done in the first place.

And now, when we have another similar situation in another year or ten, it's going to be a major NO from everyone.

If we had a vaccine "in the first place," maybe. Absent a vaccine there is no effective way to isolate the vulnerable. Countries tried and failed.

Correct

surbeying says wrote:

Yes

Exactly. We could have not "overreacted" and been successful much like India is right now.

responder wrote:

Absolutely yes.

The lockdowns, loss of jobs, suicides, mental health issues, kids missing out on education, families being torn apart. Not worth it for a virus with a 99.5% recovery rate.

Remarkably simplistic, had we just left everything open and let the virus run its course, the hospital system would have collapsed impacting tens of millions of Americans.

When all was said and done people were asked to stay home more than usual and wear a mask in public for the greater good.

Harambe wrote:

500k excess deaths. One could argue the mitigation efforts were not perfect, but they definitely were not the biggest overreaction in history.

The hysteria from the COVID denier-fearmongers already a bigger overreaction!

Dude, you are the only fear mongerer here. Questioning the hyper overreaction by people like you is not fear mongering or an overreaction. If the reaction destroyed the livelihoods of millions and the education of most children in the country while doing almost nothing to stop the 500,000 excess deaths that you claim, then it might have been a major overreaction. It was a major overreaction, one that possibly killed more than it even saved.

Calling the US response (mandates, restrictions, etc.) the "biggest overreaction in history" would be a huge exaggeration. Not even close. In fact, there was another overreaction to another event in the US in 2020 that was arguably a bigger, more dangerous, and continuing overreaction.

With hindsight, we can now say that a lot of what was said ad done was media inspired hysteria and uninformed speculation, but in early 2020, we were dealing with an unknown virus that we know was quite deadly and highly contagious, and there was no cure or vaccine, so precautions had to be taken. Keep in mind that the Chinese, not exactly known for caring about the health of their citizens, locked down over ten million people in conditions that we never came close to in the US. So we weren't the only ones overreacting.

Wearing masks during a pandemic? Hardly an overreaction. Some other things were, but the mask wearing is hardly an overreaction.

Cali Kali wrote:

responder wrote:

Absolutely yes.

The lockdowns, loss of jobs, suicides, mental health issues, kids missing out on education, families being torn apart. Not worth it for a virus with a 99.5% recovery rate.

Remarkably simplistic, had we just left everything open and let the virus run its course, the hospital system would have collapsed impacting tens of millions of Americans.

When all was said and done people were asked to stay home more than usual and wear a mask in public for the greater good.

So you are gonna ignore the thousands of small businesses that got the shaft?

Lead Foil Hat wrote:

Harambe wrote:

500k excess deaths. One could argue the mitigation efforts were not perfect, but they definitely were not the biggest overreaction in history.

The hysteria from the COVID denier-fearmongers already a bigger overreaction!

Dude, you are the only fear mongerer here. Questioning the hyper overreaction by people like you is not fear mongering or an overreaction. If the reaction destroyed the livelihoods of millions and the education of most children in the country while doing almost nothing to stop the 500,000 excess deaths that you claim, then it might have been a major overreaction. It was a major overreaction, one that possibly killed more than it even saved.

Certain businesses were always going to hit - airlines, hotels, resorts, bars, restaurants etc even without guidelines and restrictions.

A few months of home schooling has not destroyed education, that’s an hysterical over reaction.

BigYawn wrote:

Cali Kali wrote:

Remarkably simplistic, had we just left everything open and let the virus run its course, the hospital system would have collapsed impacting tens of millions of Americans.

When all was said and done people were asked to stay home more than usual and wear a mask in public for the greater good.

So you are gonna ignore the thousands of small businesses that got the shaft?

No, but it would have happened anyway.

A callosal failure by governments to take the outbreak seriously from the very beginning. Everyone in the infectious diseases community knew that something like this was coming. We were very lucky that SARS and MERS were relatively easy to contain and eliminate. But the risk of an airborne virus causing a global pandemic has been known for decades. There have even been books and movies about exactly the kind of pandemic we are in.

From the very beginning, it was clear that an elimination strategy was going to be the only way to stop a pandemic. Australia, NZ, and East Asia adopted the elimination strategy and saved millions from sickness and hundreds of thousands from death. In the US and the EU, an elimination strategy was a non-starter because neither were prepared for the kind of measures necessary to eliminate a highly contagious infectious disease. Any sort of public health infrastructure aimed at fighting a pandemic was completely underfunded and unprepared. Instead, a containment strategy was employed to try to ride out the virus in the hopes that a vaccine would save the day. The containment strategy failed regardless of how strict lockdowns were. Re-opening was always too soon and reactions to surges in cases were always too late.

Cali Kali wrote:

Lead Foil Hat wrote:

Dude, you are the only fear mongerer here. Questioning the hyper overreaction by people like you is not fear mongering or an overreaction. If the reaction destroyed the livelihoods of millions and the education of most children in the country while doing almost nothing to stop the 500,000 excess deaths that you claim, then it might have been a major overreaction. It was a major overreaction, one that possibly killed more than it even saved.

Certain businesses were always going to hit - airlines, hotels, resorts, bars, restaurants etc even without guidelines and restrictions.

A few months of home schooling has not destroyed education, that’s an hysterical over reaction.

A few months? You means 14 months and counting? Large fractions of inner city children have attended school at all in over a year. Nobody is learning online. You must be really detached from reality to think it is ok and working.

"have NOT attended school in over a year..."