Was the economic impact of Covid really necessary?
 

Sweden remained open during Covid. Bars, restaurants, schools, businesses, gyms etc. They initially had a spike in Covid deaths, but where are they today? The pundits all told us that they made a terrible mistake and their population would suffer because of their decision to remain open. The US shut schools, forced businesses to close, isolated families, trashed the economy and compounded the national debt. But we saved lives - right? Not based on the statistics we didn’t. Sweden has a population of 10.23 million and 14,267 Covid deaths. We have a population of 328.2 million and 584,000 Covid deaths. That’s .0014 of Sweden’s population and .0018 of the US population...

Did you mean was it unescapable? This is the difficulty. This never before faced difficulty by those now living on earth brought many unsolvable problems. Our leaders faced them and none really solved them but used compromises. They would be damned if they did and damned if they didn't.

Naturally a deadly virus that attacks the whole world is going to slow down economic exchange. It is like the story of King Solomon and the two women who both claimed to be the mother to a baby. He asked them....Should I divide the child with my sword?? We were in that kind of mess with this Pandemic. There was no PAT answer. People do not want to die and they do not want their loved ones to die and they do not want their income to stop.

Now we are opening back up and the stipends are making things worse, not better.

I think that the highly selective business shutdowns were not necessary in this situation and did more harm than good to the country. Ditto school shutdowns.

I think the added precautions in LTC facilities saved lives and were necessary. Beyond that, I think that people should have just been allowed to assess the risks for themselves and reacted accordingly. Painting everyone with one broad brush when most people were never at great risk from this virus was misguided.

I think it is very easy to sit at a computer screen and second guess world leaders. World leaders have millions of lives at stake on every decision they make. No matter what decision they make a LOT of people are going to be unhappy. I am thankful to not be in that position and respect anyone that made the best decisions they could at the time.

Remember "Two weeks to slow the curve"? That was the advice of Fauci and the CDC before they really had an understanding of what was going on. When it became apparent that this was a much more serious health crisis, we had a leader who stepped up, cut through red tape, and got the ball rolling on vaccines and mitigation.

Now, 14 months later, we find the CDC and Fauci way behind the curve with their rules and mandates. Almost 55% vaccinated not counting those who have immunity from getting Covid. Yesterday TSA screened the highest number of air travelers since 14 months ago.

Yes, there are pockets where, I'll be blunt, Darwin's children refuse to get the shot but in general I believe we are over the hump and ready for normalcy whether the CDC says so or not. We have had enough of bureaucratic overreach.

I would guess the families and friends of the 584,000 dead would disagree.

Members of my household have been going to their service industry jobs and dealing with the public face to face throughout this pandemic. Even when dentists and primary care physicians had closed their offices and weren't seeing patients, there were workers heading to their jobs at grocery stores, pharmacies, food service, gasoline stations - day in, day out.

That has helped to shape my perspective as to the risks of this virus. When you live with the risk daily, you get a pretty good idea how bad (or not so bad) things really are, at least in terms of yourself and your own family.

I'm the 55 year old mom who had healthy, active teens going to their jobs and schools plus activities. And, I was also the whippersnapper who was out running errands for her elderly mom. I haven't had the luxury of "staying safe" but thankfully we did manage to get through the better part of a year without a vaccine.

Now that the cases are falling, vulnerable people have gotten vaccinated and the actual risks of catching Covid have been greatly reduced we are now supposed to run out and get vaccinated even though we have likely already had the virus, albeit mild cases of it?

Why?

Won’t argue any scientific with you, or anyone, but a few corrections in your post...

1. Dr Faucci was not . The person who made the announcement “ Actually, he was not even the advisor for the WH (that was Dr Brix at the time this announcement was made). This announcement was made on March 16, 2020, not by Faucci.

Fact is, a few days later, after we were told by the government (not Faucci) that this virus would dissipate by July or August of 2020, Faucci actually said that Americans should be staying home for “several weeks”.

Covid: A year later, Trump'''s '''15 days to slow the spread''' shows how little we knew

Fauci predicts Americans will likely need to stay home for at least several more weeks

Not a scientist, but I think the vaccine trials began in December of 2020, and that Pfizer worked with German money and scientific knowledge to get the vaccine going. I am sure that within WHO, there was sharing, however in May 2020, the US pulled out of WHO

I post this and if anything is in error, please correct. It just seems we have serious memory lapses and want to make Faucci the scapegoat always, even when he was not involved. He is not perfect to be sure, but misquoting and using partial truths is not fair.

I would agree, but equally as bad is the “misremembering” of facts, the distorted out of context quotes to make some obscure point.

Tough calls for all who were involved

Remember "just like the flu, and gone by April - magically".

Everyone made mistakes, everyone was learning as we went.

Disagree with what?!? We had the shut downs they are still dead. I truly don’t understand your post...

You ask "why"? There are many un-vaccinated people that are prime hosts for the virus to create more variants. Those variants have the ability to possibly render our current vaccines incapable of the protection they currently provide. It is all about mitigating the variants at this point, IMHO.

Perhaps disagree with this sentence from a post just prior to that post

"when most people were never at great risk from this virus was misguided."

Then the post you question makes sense....

"I would guess the families and friends of the 584,000 dead would disagree."

Hind sight is 20/20

Hindsight is always the clearest. Sweden also has social programs that we don't that provides a safety net for their citizens.