Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Are Lockdowns Effective ?


I suppose that the obvious answer to this question depends on what one is measuring. If one is measuring the number of and the spread of the Wuhan virus infections, then I guess the answer has to be ‘yes.’ After all if people are locked down in their homes, and are not out living their usual lives in the community, then logic would dictate that these individuals are not exposed to others, then therefore there would be less chance of them becoming infected . . . at least for a while.

 Now for me, here is where the difficulty comes in. This difficulty involves a concept that I cannot diagram in a format such as this, but will try to explain. 

First, imagine a triangle with a relatively narrow base and a relatively high peak. Let the area within this triangle represent deaths from Covid. In New York City, for whatever reason, there was an extremely high peaked triangle over a relatively short period of time. Conceptually let’s call the large area contained within this New York triangle … ‘X.’
In other words, X people died in New York during a relatively short period of time. (a high peaked triangle with a relatively narrow base)

Next, let’s consider California. California locked down very early. On March 19 California became the first state to issue stay-at-home orders. At that time Governor Newsom stated that the goal was to “bend the curve”. For the most part, the sheep in California followed his diktat. Now going over five months California continues on some arbitrary partial lockdown strategy with a bunch of, as best I can tell, “made-up” criteria. (“Made-up” meaning that for which no actual data exists.) Going back to my geometric analogy, whereas New York was the high peaked triangle with the relatively narrow base, California is a rectangle that is not extremely tall, but with a long base. (Let’s call the area contained in this rectangle, ‘Y.’  In fact at this point no one knows for how long this rectangle will continue to expand.)

Now that I have made my geometric analogy as clear as I can, here is my postulate:

In the end, the area contained in the triangle (‘X’ or the number of deaths) will be just about the same as the area contained in the rectangle (‘Y’ or the number of deaths) minus those deaths that occurred during the lockdowns that were from other cause, e.g. cancer.

So my question is still the same: “Are lockdowns effective?”

If that question concerns the number of people that will eventually die from the coronavirus, the answer is “no,’ as over the long term the total number of deaths from the virus will be about the same if you have a either a triangle, ‘X’,  or a rectangle, ‘Y.’  In addition, I predict that this postulate will be proven over time, and it may take years to sort this out. (The caveat, however, is that if there is a vaccine next month, then the continued expansion of the rectangle will stop.)

Finally, let’s address and extrapolate this question in another way:

“Are lockdowns effective in destroying an economy and in the process destroying the lives of millions of people?”

Here the answer is, “Yes, without question!”

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