Covid, the "lockdowns" etc.

[Abraxus]

I am sympathetic to restaurant owners life would have been different I could have owned one. Except many perhaps too many did not follow any quarantine protocols. Packed crowds, no enforcing of wearing a mask for the patrons that is not going to make the numbers go down. Many did push their luck the numbers went up and unfortunately they are not considered an essential service. Maybe it's because I have not eaten as much junk food like before or maybe less good quality yet the last time I ordered from Wendys and from a local restaurant the food did not make me sick it just tasted yet sat in stomach like a lump. Even in terms my finances it shows that I have more money too. Too many restaurant owners wanted to play with fire so to speak and expected not to get burnt. Certain actions have consequences and if you don't give a fuck about what happens don't come crying to me or anyone else if something bad happens because of it. At most I might hire an orchestra of the world smallest violins to play for you.

It's so bad in my area I received and Amber alert on my phone. Where I live I can't even so my fiance anymore. The fines can now go as high as 6000$. Sure one try and claim the fine is unconstitutional yet not sure how strong or valid that kind of defense can be when people have been told about the fines for the better part of year or more. It's annoying that I cannot do Christmas and  New Years with my fiance and her family an maybe my own. It is what it is. It's easy to say "your being a slave and afraid " when your lucky that the governments in charge don't fine people. In my area they broke up a bunch of house parties and events with 50+ people in attendance. That's people who are so weak who can't spend some time not partying or mentally ill imo. I was not going to run the risk of catching the previous fine of 1000% over a couple of stupid beers and food. Unlike many other places they can and do enforce the giving of fines.

The problem is governments in North america should have been more strict once the virus raged out of control in Europe. Instead relying on people to do the "right " thing. That worked out so well. Person returning from Europe or an infected area mandatory 14 day quarantine no exceptions. Instead we get to see the negative aspects of Democracy where even before push comes to shove most people won't do the right thing and we have the situation we are in. People want to be entitled, fuck consequences and screw everyone else then bitch and whine that restrictions are unfair well you can't have it both ways. Maybe in the carefully constructed imaginary narrative filled worlds that many live in sure. Reality is something else.

HappyDaze I ca't say we will agree on everything just call me whatever you want.

Shasarak I should not have made a blanket statement about the posters on this site yet many come off as being socially retarded gamers with mental health issues. If it's not caring about anyone else but themselves it's wanting to murder, shot or hang their ideological opponents. Again it's not a very welcoming environment imo and might just be their Internet persona vs the real thing. 

[HappyDaze]

HappyDaze I ca't say we will agree on everything just call me whatever you want.

No, sureshot, we won't always agree, but it sounds like you're hurting right now. While I might fling some shit at what I perceive to be asshole posters (based on their online personas, which I sincerely hope do not accurately reflect the way they act IRL), I'm not 100% a dick. I hope things get better for you and your fiance. Be well.

[Pat]

I am sympathetic to restaurant owners life would have been different I could have owned one. Except many perhaps too many did not follow any quarantine protocols. Packed crowds, no enforcing of wearing a mask for the patrons that is not going to make the numbers go down. Many did push their luck the numbers went up and unfortunately they are not considered an essential service. Maybe it's because I have not eaten as much junk food like before or maybe less good quality yet the last time I ordered from Wendys and from a local restaurant the food did not make me sick it just tasted yet sat in stomach like a lump. Even in terms my finances it shows that I have more money too. Too many restaurant owners wanted to play with fire so to speak and expected not to get burnt. Certain actions have consequences and if you don't give a fuck about what happens don't come crying to me or anyone else if something bad happens because of it. At most I might hire an orchestra of the world smallest violins to play for you.

It's so bad in my area I received and Amber alert on my phone. Where I live I can't even so my fiance anymore. The fines can now go as high as 6000$. Sure one try and claim the fine is unconstitutional yet not sure how strong or valid that kind of defense can be when people have been told about the fines for the better part of year or more. It's annoying that I cannot do Christmas and  New Years with my fiance and her family an maybe my own. It is what it is. It's easy to say "your being a slave and afraid " when your lucky that the governments in charge don't fine people. In my area they broke up a bunch of house parties and events with 50+ people in attendance. That's people who are so weak who can't spend some time not partying or mentally ill imo. I was not going to run the risk of catching the previous fine of 1000% over a couple of stupid beers and food. Unlike many other places they can and do enforce the giving of fines.

The problem is governments in North america should have been more strict once the virus raged out of control in Europe. Instead relying on people to do the "right " thing. That worked out so well. Person returning from Europe or an infected area mandatory 14 day quarantine no exceptions. Instead we get to see the negative aspects of Democracy where even before push comes to shove most people won't do the right thing and we have the situation we are in. People want to be entitled, fuck consequences and screw everyone else then bitch and whine that restrictions are unfair well you can't have it both ways. Maybe in the carefully constructed imaginary narrative filled worlds that many live in sure. Reality is something else.

Your entire post is one big wall of ignorance and fear.

It's not about restaurant owners. They're estimating that one third of all businesses of any kind have closed their doors in NJ, and will never reopen. That's not just a few delis or coffee houses, or a few people wanting to eat out, that's literally one in three shops on main street. For the workers, it's their jobs, maybe their careers. For the the owners, it's their livelihoods. And more than that, it's their lives. Because when you put people out of work, when you deplete their life savings, when you destroy their hopes and dreams, then you kill them. Suicide and domestic abuse have gotten a lot of attention, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. Reduced lifetime incomes means lowered health outcomes, and poorer educational opportunities for their children, so it becomes generational. They talk a lot about the lives lost in hospital beds, but ignore the far greater number of lives that will be lost because of the shutdowns. Just because those losses are harder to see doesn't mean they don't matter.

It's not about wearing a mask. All the evidence suggests that masks have little or no effect, and even if they did, compliance rates are high across the US and Europe. If masks had a significant effect overall, and only 10% of people wore a mask, there would be a lot of room for improvement. But since compliance rates are 85% or higher, bumping that to 90% or 95% would only be a minor incremental improvement.

And bars and restaurants aren't the hot spots where the virus is spreading, anyway. Nor is it groceries and other large box stores, or schools. It seems to mostly be private social gatherings.

You could make a point about social distancing, or more properly, physical distancing. Compliance rates seem to have dropped. Which is actually another argument against masks, because a lot of people seem to have become convinced that wearing a mask makes them immune, so they no longer bother keeping their distance.

But even if people keep their distance, it would just slow the spread, not stop it. COVID-19 is very infectious, and the lengthy pre-symptomatic but infectious period, the high proportion of asymptomatic carriers, and the way its symptoms almost entirely overlap with other more routine and familiar diseases, mean once it starts spreading in the community there's really no way to stop it. Contact tracing is a sad joke, and there was no point when a severe lockdown of the borders of the US and the EU would have worked, because the latest studies show that the disease was widespread in the US in and Italy in December, before it was even recognized as a threat.

It is about privilege. Your privilege. It's the highly educated, highly technological, white collar workers who can isolate themselves at home. They have jobs that can be done remotely, large homes with plenty of space, the income to convert rooms into workspaces, to stockpile supplies, and the other resources to pull it off. That's not the case with the working classes, or the poor, who have to work because they live paycheck to paycheck, and whose work requires being around other people. It's even worse around the world, where extreme poverty is skyrocketing and people are starving.

They're the victims, not the monsters you seem to think they are. They're not the ones out of touch, or lacking in compassion, or mentally ill, or weak. It's the government, who are imposing blanket mandates because bureaucrats and politicians are almost never punished for excessive caution, even when the cost of those measures if far higher than doing nothing. And it's the people like you who show no sympathy for the misery it causes, mock them, insult them, and call them names.

[Snowman0147]

Well said Pat.

[Ghostmaker]

Indeed. Pat and I haven't gotten along much here, but this is absolutely on target.

People were told 'it'll only be for a short time' and 'just to flatten the curve'. Two weeks turned into three turned into a month turned into three months turned into... well, we're now in fucking December. And the refrain is 'well, not enough people are complying so we have to get tougher!'.

Which is disturbingly similar to a common refrain for government programs. 'Well, this didn't work, so we need to pour MORE money into it!'.

[HappyDaze]

It is about privilege. Your privilege.

These words always start conversations off on the right track.

[Ratman_tf]

It is about privilege. Your privilege.

These words always start conversations off on the right track.

Not always. I was priviliged to have a work from home job when the lockdowns hit. I worked from home for four months while other less fourtunate people were laid off or fired. That's a direct and tangible privilige, not some etheral privilige-ness that sometimes gets bandied around on other topics.

[jhkim]

But even if people keep their distance, it would just slow the spread, not stop it. COVID-19 is very infectious, and the lengthy pre-symptomatic but infectious period, the high proportion of asymptomatic carriers, and the way its symptoms almost entirely overlap with other more routine and familiar diseases, mean once it starts spreading in the community there's really no way to stop it. Contact tracing is a sad joke, and there was no point when a severe lockdown of the borders of the US and the EU would have worked, because the latest studies show that the disease was widespread in the US in and Italy in December, before it was even recognized as a threat.

They're the victims, not the monsters you seem to think they are. They're not the ones out of touch, or lacking in compassion, or mentally ill, or weak. It's the government, who are imposing blanket mandates because bureaucrats and politicians are almost never punished for excessive caution, even when the cost of those measures if far higher than doing nothing. And it's the people like you who show no sympathy for the misery it causes, mock them, insult them, and call them names.

Here you're saying the virus will spread no matter what, and thus arguing against wearing masks, contact tracing, and lockdowns. But we *do* observe that there are countries which are doing better both economically and in deaths. Successfully fighting off the virus makes for a stronger economy -- and yes, there are countries that have done much better in dealing with the virus. The main case for your point used to be Sweden -- which didn't do lockdowns -- but the data continues to be marginal, not showing a clear win. Its economy is better than many EU countries, but so did Norway's. And Sweden has had vastly more deaths than Norway, which are now spiking to the point that they are going ahead with lockdowns. That doesn't seem like a win to me.

Sweden's approach wasn't crazy, but it's not the shining star that many are making it out to be. The clearest winners in the economy are South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Australia -- which have had fewer deaths and a stronger economy. Below, you can see there's a wide range of covid death rate and gdp hit this year among countries -- and the countries doing the best also have a low death rate.

Your endorsed strategy is to let the virus spread freely among the young and healthy, and isolate only the vulnerable population. You claim that it's obvious to do so. If it's so clear, why is there no country in the world that has successfully used this approach? As far as I can tell, the answer is that it just doesn't work on a large scale to isolate the vulnerable from the healthy.

[img width="700"]http://darkshire.net/jhkim/opinions/covid/covid-death-rate-vs-gdp-growth.png[/img]

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/q2-gdp-growth-vs-confirmed-deaths-due-to-covid-19-per-million-people?tab=chart&stackMode=absolute&minPopulationFilter=1000000&country=&region=World

Nobody's quite sure why Asia is doing better than the West, but it's not mask wearing. One theory is subtle cultural differences, like Japanese on tightly packed trains who don't talk to each other, in comparison to all the people constantly talking on their cell phones (and thus spreading droplets) in supermarkets in the US. The other major theory is that Asia has experienced multiple waves of coronavirus before, from sars1 20 years ago, to others that probably weren't even noticed, so more of the population already has some degree of cross-immunity. There are even a few daring to say it might have a genetic component, arguing that immunity has evolved over the past 25,000 years in response to prehistorical pandemics. We may have a clear answer in a few months, because they're starting to do research like measuring the prevalence of antibodies that are partially reactive to sars2 in East Asian populations.

So you'll believe that not talking prevents the spread of droplets makes a huge difference - but masks make no difference in spread of droplets? Mask-wearing is included of the cultural differences you're talking about - along with others like not shaking hands and talking less in crowds. The theory of other disease spreads has no evidence right now, and there's no explanation for why it would be restricted to Asia when other coronaviruses have spread around elsewhere.

I agree that we don't have absolute proof about why some countries are doing better than others -- because it's a new virus, and it's not something we can ethically experiment with much. But it seems to me that we should be paying close attention to both the culture and the government measures in countries that have been successful.

And the evidence completely supports the idea that countries without massive lockdowns are doing better, economically. Look at Europe, with strong lockdowns nearly everywhere and dismal economic projections for the next quarter. The projections for East Asia are much better, and the same is true for the US. In Europe, Sweden is an economic bright spot. Or look at Latin America, India, or Africa.

This is mixing up cause and effect. What we see is that high rates of infection and death cause *both* (a) lockdowns; and (b) economic harm. Countries that have successfully taken other measures to deal with the virus don't have to lockdown. Conversely, countries with high death rates turn to lockdowns as a last-ditch effort. It's not an independent variable.

[EOTB]

The simple truth is that saying no to covid measures requires no argumentation nor justification.  It requires nothing more than people saying "I'd rather take my chances."

Entertaining the premise that an argument most be considered credible, statistically, by people amiable to emergency measures is to lose before you say one word.

We never should have allowed seat belt laws on the basis of mortality reduction.  That was a significant validation of this entire flawed premise.  It should have been nipped right there instead of being allowed to take root and grow

[jhkim]

The simple truth is that saying no to covid measures requires no argumentation nor justification.  It requires nothing more than people saying "I'd rather take my chances."

Entertaining the premise that an argument most be considered credible, statistically, by people amiable to emergency measures is to lose before you say one word.

We never should have allowed seat belt laws on the basis of mortality reduction.  That was a significant validation of this entire flawed premise.  It should have been nipped right there instead of being allowed to take root and grow

You're citing seat belt laws, but fire codes, drug laws, speed limits and similar laws go back much earlier than that. There's a long history of laws based on mortality reduction.

I would say that if a person is risking only their *own* life, then I favor being more lenient. I don't favor total drug deregulation, but I favor more relaxed laws around morality.

However, if a person is endangering the public by their behavior, then I think it is less clear. If someone is shooting off fireworks in their own apartment, then they should be stopped - because the fire could spread to other apartments and even other buildings if it goes up. Likewise, if someone is driving recklessly, they endanger not only themselves, but other people on the roads. It's the same with infectious disease - whether that's covid or HIV or whatever. An infectious disease isn't just a risk to the person - it's a risk to everyone around them.

[Shasarak]

You are more likely to die by Drunk Walking then you are by Drunk Driving so why no laws against Drunk Walking?

https://freakonomics.com/2011/12/28/the-perils-of-drunk-walking/

[moonsweeper]

You're citing seat belt laws, but fire codes, drug laws, speed limits and similar laws go back much earlier than that. There's a long history of laws based on mortality reduction.

I would say that if a person is risking only their *own* life, then I favor being more lenient. I don't favor total drug deregulation, but I favor more relaxed laws around morality.

However, if a person is endangering the public by their behavior, then I think it is less clear. If someone is shooting off fireworks in their own apartment, then they should be stopped - because the fire could spread to other apartments and even other buildings if it goes up. Likewise, if someone is driving recklessly, they endanger not only themselves, but other people on the roads. It's the same with infectious disease - whether that's covid or HIV or whatever. An infectious disease isn't just a risk to the person - it's a risk to everyone around them.

So you do oppose seat belt laws because the person refusing is only endangering themselves?

[Pat]

Here you're saying the virus will spread no matter what, and thus arguing against wearing masks, contact tracing, and lockdowns.

You're flipping cause and effect.

I'm saying that masks don't have a significant effect. There was a lack of studies at the start of the pandemic, but the theory that masks block airflow and large droplets seemed sound (sneeze and the tissue gets wet), and early studies like the hamster one seemed to indicate masks had some effect. But with newer evidence, that seems to be wrong. The disease is highly aerosolized, and thus masks have little effect. This is backed up by literally dozens of population studies, showing no significant correlation between mask mandates and infection rates.

I'm saying in countries where there is widespread community transmission, contract tracing is a joke. That's because tracing a single case requires a lot of work. You have trace back all their contacts, to figure out where they caught the disease, then reach out to everyone who had significant contact with them during the period when they were potentially infectious. Then you have to monitor everyone up and down the transmission chain, and react the same way to any new case that crops up. This is like cutting off the head of a hydra, only to have two new heads grow back in. It can be done, but it has to be killed quickly, or you end up with more heads than you can handle. And once you've passed that point, i.e. once you've move beyond a small handful of cases with readily attributable origins, like a cruise ship, or a superspreader event, or a few cases trickling in over the borders, it becomes impossible to kill the beast. This is not disputed; look at any of the literature. Once you have widespread community transmission, or cases you can't trace back to a known origin, contact tracing is pointless.

Not only that, but COVID-19 is uniquely difficult to trace. Diseases like ebola or tuberculosis are only contagious when the person is displaying a clear set of symptoms. But with sars2, there appears to be presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission. This is further complicated by an unusually lengthy incubation period, and people who never develop symptoms at all. Not to mention the high false positive rates in the early tests, or how it can be easily dismissed as some other minor case of the sniffles because the symptoms almost completely overlap with the symptoms of seasonal diseases that people get every year, like the common cold or the flu. As a result, the chain of contacts that need to be traced is greatly extended, and it's much harder to identify if someone has the disease. The recent evidence that COVID-19 was widespread in the US and Italy in December of last year, without anyone knowing, shows how invisible webs of infection can spread without even being noticed.

On the economic lockdowns, remember 15 days to slow the spread? It's been 7 or 8 months. Yet there seem to be little or no correlation between economic lockdowns, and lower transmission rates. You can make an argument that certain measures, like shutting down large gatherings such as concerts provides a real benefit, but closing all non-essential businesses? No, that doesn't seem to help. And it's caused horrendous damage, far beyond any conceivable upside. And the people who are most affected aren't the rich. Jeff Bezos had a spectacular year, and now the stock market is booming again. Big businesses are growing, and the 1% are doing great. But family businesses are vanishing at appalling rates, working people are suffering, and around the world the number of people being pushed into extreme poverty is throwing out all the progress we've made in the last 50 years.

So I'm saying that the evidence shows that masks don't seem to have any significant effect, that once we've reached widespread community transmission contract tracing becomes pointless even with diseases that are less stealthy than sars2, and that the economic lockdowns also seem to have little effect on the disease while having devastating effects on people, particularly the most vulnerable. The conclusion, not the starting point, is that we don't have any way to stop the spread of the virus.

But we *do* observe that there are countries which are doing better both economically and in deaths. Successfully fighting off the virus makes for a stronger economy -- and yes, there are countries that have done much better in dealing with the virus. The main case for your point used to be Sweden -- which didn't do lockdowns -- but the data continues to be marginal, not showing a clear win. Its economy is better than many EU countries, but so did Norway's. And Sweden has had vastly more deaths than Norway, which are now spiking to the point that they are going ahead with lockdowns. That doesn't seem like a win to me.

Sweden's approach wasn't crazy, but it's not the shining star that many are making it out to be. The clearest winners in the economy are South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Australia -- which have had fewer deaths and a stronger economy. Below, you can see there's a wide range of covid death rate and gdp hit this year among countries -- and the countries doing the best also have a low death rate.

Yes, some countries are doing better than others. But the point is, we're not sure why. Taiwan? The low rate makes little sense. They're right next to China, with a direct link. Yet the number of cases was absurdly low. They did lock down their borders, but not quickly enough. There should be far more cases. It's the same mystery with Japan and South Korea. As I mentioned before, it might be related to specific cultural factors (not mask wearing), cross-immunity because of exposure to earlier coronaviruses, or even genes. This is also the situation that contract tracing was designed for: A low number of cases, and tight border controls to make it easy to trace back every case, and to limit exoinfections. Countries like New Zealand were also able to pull it off, but that's because they were infected relatively late, and it's a lot easier to restrict travel to an island.

Indonesia is similar, but there might be a different cause. While temperature doesn't seem correlated with the infection rate, high humidity does seem to correlate very strongly with lower transmission rates. And much of SE Asia tends to be very wet.

But even that doesn't explain places like Africa. The reporting is poor from that continent, so they could be missing cases. But even after trying to compensate, the infection rate seems ridiculously low. Maybe two orders of magnitude lower than in the West. Why? No idea. It's not masks or economic shutdowns, though.

"Fighting off" doesn't seem correlated to anything. The US states and EU nations that took extreme measures often suffered the worst, and infection rates seem to go up and down, regardless of the lockdowns.

The countries that are doing well, economically, are those that crippled their own economies the least. The US, for instance, is doing far better than Spain. NJ is doing worse than Florida.

Your endorsed strategy is to let the virus spread freely among the young and healthy, and isolate only the vulnerable population. You claim that it's obvious to do so. If it's so clear, why is there no country in the world that has successfully used this approach? As far as I can tell, the answer is that it just doesn't work on a large scale to isolate the vulnerable from the healthy.

I never endorsed that strategy. It's inevitable, to some degree, because unless we get lucky with the vaccines, the disease will spread to its natural extent in the areas where there's widespread community transmission. We can't stop that.

But there is value in not overwhelming the hospitals. We know masks are mostly ineffective, and economic lockdowns are devastating. But those aren't the only measures that can be taken. Hygiene remains important, and we should be doing more than just telling people to wash their hands and clean commonly used surfaces. Physical distancing (not social) may also help. We should be building on these, and talking about how the disease spreads. There's nothing magical about 6 ft or 2 m; pretending it's a talisman that wards of evil and not an off-the-cuff guideline is bad.

Ventilation also hasn't been discussed enough. With aerosolization, it's all about airflow. Open windows. Huge open areas are much safer than tightly packed, enclosed areas. Talk about viral loads. The risk of severe symptoms and death rises dramatically, if you get a heavy dose, because your system can be overwhelmed before your natural defenses kick in. That's why some hospital workers who caught the disease had bad results, because they were in an environment where the virus was everywhere. But the same applies at home; if your husband catches the disease, and you keep sleeping in the same bed with him, you're a lot more likely to end up on a ventilator. Keep to separate rooms, and separate bathrooms if possible. Talk about bubbles. Figure out ways to physically isolate the elderly, without socially isolating them. Informal measures, like appeals to stay home, can also help.

Targeted restrictions in specific communities might also make sense. That's because hospitals don't serve the nation, or a state; they serve specific communities. The national news screaming that the "hospital system is overwhelmed" and that we need to shut down everything doesn't help, because many hospitals will be empty. In fact, it hurts. We should all know by now that hospitals were furloughing and laying off workers, when the first wave hit, because they weren't in NYC or one of the other hard hit areas. Imposing curfews in specific communities might even make sense, for short periods. But not indefinite state or national lockdowns of all non-essential businesses.

Not all these are equal. We know most spread occurs at contained social gatherings. I.e. places where there's little ventilation, and people are in close quarters for extended periods of time doing things like talking to each other. It's much less likely outdoors, when you're in brief contact, or where people aren't engaging each other. There's almost no chance you'll catch it from a surface.

[EOTB]

The simple truth is that saying no to covid measures requires no argumentation nor justification.  It requires nothing more than people saying "I'd rather take my chances."

Entertaining the premise that an argument most be considered credible, statistically, by people amiable to emergency measures is to lose before you say one word.

We never should have allowed seat belt laws on the basis of mortality reduction.  That was a significant validation of this entire flawed premise.  It should have been nipped right there instead of being allowed to take root and grow

You're citing seat belt laws, but fire codes, drug laws, speed limits and similar laws go back much earlier than that. There's a long history of laws based on mortality reduction.

I would say that if a person is risking only their *own* life, then I favor being more lenient. I don't favor total drug deregulation, but I favor more relaxed laws around morality.

However, if a person is endangering the public by their behavior, then I think it is less clear. If someone is shooting off fireworks in their own apartment, then they should be stopped - because the fire could spread to other apartments and even other buildings if it goes up. Likewise, if someone is driving recklessly, they endanger not only themselves, but other people on the roads. It's the same with infectious disease - whether that's covid or HIV or whatever. An infectious disease isn't just a risk to the person - it's a risk to everyone around them.

Fire code laws aren't controversial - you didn't have a lot of people saying they would rather take their chances.
Drug laws weren't controversial - the vast majority of people wanted them. 
Speeding laws were deemed an overreach and 55 was repealed - no one wanted 55 beyond a fringe of Karens.  In that way its similar. (edit - also note that the pro-55 fear-mongering statisticians warnings of carnage on US highways didn't happen)
HIV seems to defeat your argument entirely, as if we were to treat HIV similarly, there would be a lockdown on the most risky, non-reproductive forms of sex.  But instead that was considered to impinge on the freedoms of those wishing to indulge.  The desire to keep risky forms of non-reproductive sex free of any and all stigma has gone so far as to make it so that it is not a crime to fail to inform a potential partner you're HIV-positive.  And even though it's a blood-borne disease, we decided we didn't want to refuse them the freedom to donate blood.

[Kyle Aaron]

HIV seems to defeat your argument entirely, as if we were to treat HIV similarly, there would be a lockdown on the most risky, non-reproductive forms of sex. 

There's an epidemiologist who makes that very comparison, basically: lockdowns are the abstinence approach, ineffective, miserable, and doomed to failure.

https://twitter.com/JuliaLMarcus
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/quarantine-fatigue-real-and-shaming-people-wont-help/611482/