Is the lockdown causing more problems than COVID 19?

There are 96 replies in this Thread which has previously been viewed 16,415 times. The latest Post () was by Splinter.

    Quote from Rice

    Exactly what do you mean, @JAN ? What kind of global disaster do you see that we would not be facing if we had simply let the virus kill the most vulnerable and decimated the world’s population?

    Rice, u make it sound like the virus kills vulnerable and the financial crisis and chaos to come, will only kill white collar capitalists!!!!

    As said by many, the cure can not be worse than the cause.... then the whole work doesn't make sense!

    I was watching a program about the shutdown India is going into..... a billion population country, many day to day living...... u will see hundreds of thousands or even more die from hunger!!!! In the whole world, it's not only companies and capitalists that loose money, no, the people underneath are seriously fucked also and could end up dieing! So again, my point is this: if for example the virus would kill 1 million worldwide if it was set loose from day one, (which is to late), and with the prevention, shutdowns, restrictions also kill 1 million.... why is option two better than option one??????

    The aftermath and consequences of the global lockdown could very well end up costing the same amount of lives as the virus would have killed.

    As I said in my post: it's hypothetical, I just was thinking about it.....we are already deep deep down into the shit.....no way back or no way of changing.

    Splinter I like u think that this is only causing "financial" disaster......you yourself told your bizz is down to zero.....many I know is in same situation, zero income, and they are not capitalists or rich people.....so the price to pay everyone will carry! Where does the dictatorship come in play???

    im not 100% sure on that one.....when u start to read about herd immunity and how that it's automatically contained at a certain point!!!!!

    and again: who will be the "winner" country in this whole thing, nobody knows yet! Nobody can predict which country in the world will be the one that spin out of the disaster.....which measurements was the correct to achieve it? Nobody know!!!! Even some of the serious affected countries could end up taking of and continueing life as normal as soon as the high of the virus in the world is reached!!!!

    Maybe China bankrupted the world and got over it with paying just a few thousands of deaths, but conquered world dominance!!!! Nobody know how the horror film ends, nobody!

    Herd immunity is a thing, as it is with all viruses. As you all know, I am firmly on the side of believing the cure cannot be worse than the disease and think we're heading for real problems if we continue. However, I think containment measures are neccesary, they just arrived too late.


    @JAN, your option 1 would have created a whole set of other problems. I am going to be blunt and pragmatice about if for the sake of conversation (i.e., talk as if human life is not important). One of the problems with your first option is that COVID-19 kills, but it kills by putting a burden on health care. If it would just turn up in a patient one day and kill them the next, fine perhaps allowing it to move freely would work.


    However, the way it take days and weeks to escalate and kill a patient means health services would have collpased if COVID-19 was left to run rampant. It would have killed millions and health systems are not going to handle that. I am not talking about bending under the strain, I am talking about health infrastructure not recovering for years or decades, if it ever recovered at all.


    The only pragmatic way for your option to work in my opinion would be to not treat people and just let them die in their homes. Of course, there are myriad ethical problems (what if the person could be saves the most obvious) with that and it would also cause its own social crisis. You think people wouldn't riot if their loved ones were dropping dead with zero intervention?


    I maintain the only real answer to this problem has already passed. When the outbreak took hold in January, China should have been shut off from the international community with no travel to and from for a month. Anyone who made the last flights following this lockdown should have been placed in quarantine. Anyone who was in the vulnerable age group or other factors should have been isolated, and the rest of the population could have built that herd immunity.


    One of the problems with my answer would be convincing people COVID-19 could be a big problem, so older realtives really need to isolate, and when you get home from work, wash like a madman. Still, the time to act was at the end of Jan, beginning of Feb.


    Looking at Argentina specifically, the country not only has a lot of movement between China, it also has a lot of movement to and from Italy, Spain, and the US... the four worst countries. So, Argentina missed shutting itself down to China. Ok, mistakes happen. However, when Italy's problems really started at the beginning of March, Argentina should have closed its borders then and seriously considered forced lockdown for all vulnerable people.


    The president didn't do that and it was eventually too late and we all had to be locked down on the 19th. He acted quickly compared to other countries but I think that's damning with faint priase. Argentina was also late.

    It's a tough situation with no easy answer. I actually think Argentina have dealt with it pretty well....they even took preventative measure before parts of Europe did. I've been more surprised by how well the locals have reacted to the lockdown measures. I had my doubts whether they would take it all that seriously buy they have, probably a lot better than I have.


    I was in Dia the other day and wondered why the folk queuing at the checkout were so spread out then it suddenly twigged they were keeping their distance from the person in front. It hadn't crossed my mind to do that so I had to move back.


    Everyone will have learnt something from this. I just hope we won't need to put it into practice in the near future.

    Semigoodlooking u r saying exactly the same as I have been saying.....and that since January!!!!


    Problem was that early in the phrase, already left-wing boludos already starting ranting about anti semitism, paranoia etc.! Today we can thank those moddafokkers for the situation we are in......including the 100.000 feminist parading in Spain!


    In the two case scenarios many people are gonna die, no matter what....so question is only WHO is gonna die! Its impossible to say IF we would have been better of by just letting it have its go.......(meaning less casualties). There is for sure a few things that point towards herd immunity in f.ex. Germany and the Scandinavian countries....


    And as a big conspiracy believer... hahaha....isnt it suspicious how the virus is "controlled" in China, with a very little death rate of the total population, (even if u add a zero or two).......compare that to the DISASTER that is just rolling in over USA!

    (Just a side note: Trump did not cause the virus, but he might have handled it bad......just like nearly all European countries, like Spain , Italy, Swiss, Austria, etc etc).

    Quote from UK Man

    It's a tough situation with no easy answer. I actually think Argentina have dealt with it pretty well....they even took preventative measure before parts of Europe did.

    I just don't agree. At the moment, you are confined to your house, millions cannot work, the economic outlook is looking bleak, people can't spend time together, cannot see loved ones.


    All of this is because the government did not act in time. Faster than Europe doesn't matter if the solution is still the wrong one. I want to be clear, because of how long Argentina waited, the situation we are in now is currently the correct one. Although I insist it cannot go on much longer.


    Being faster than Europe does not deserve praise in my eyes, and I am not talking through a political bias.


    Perhaps this situation was inevitable either way, but the world (including Argentina) dragged its feet when it was time to take pre-emptive action.

    Semigoodlooking fully agree!

    If a common John Doe like u and me could get on that idea in January, for sure some higher up and more educated and knowledgeable person should also have got on that idea!!! Minimum lock up and quarantine EVERY person entering.....meaning locking up a few million instead of 44 million!!!!

    And like little Good looking is saying: the quarantine cannot go on like this....it will have SEVERE, seriously severe consequences......much worse than a few more deaths from the virus!!!!

    As I said there's no easy answer....either way you're going to get blamed for not doing/for doing something. Sweden has no lockdown rules in place. People are dying and the economy is being hit. Be interesting to see how they come out of it compared to the other countries around them.

    @JAN


    We know one of the reasons nothing substantial was done in February was because of the perceived racisim behind discluding a whole country from travel. However, we were also told at the time the economic fallout from shutting China off from the world for a period of months would be too great. How's the economy looking now?


    However, I want to be clear that we are in the situation we are in now, no matter how we got here. I don't disagree with the measures taken by Argentina, I just believe they may have been avoidable. I beleive at the moment a lockdown may be the best option, but every passing day is making the solution worse than the cure.

    Semigoodlooking ...... everyone posting here are probably in a superior situation compared to 99% of the rest of Argentinian people.....

    So, we can easy say what we think is ok or not, because we will probably be ok for a few months even with no work or no income........but the majority of Argentina is not in that superior situation!

    I don't wanna think about what is underway in the more humble neighborhoods, like f.ex. Matanza.....the population there in total is 1.4 million! Many of those live from the hand to the mouth.....!!!!

    The people in Recoleta and Palermo, the northern suburbs etc., Can stay indoor a few weeks, no problem.....but majority in Argentina cannot!!!! If I had nothing to eat or to give to eat for my family, I know exactly how I would react!!!

    Imagine shops and restaurants.....

    Missing out on a month of business.... impossible to recuperate afterwards.....many will go belly up!!!

    The extension of the quarantine until 13. April is the absolute maximum that will be possible without country exploding!!!! (Don't forget the dire situation country was in before!!!!!).

    I agree, although I think we can probably manage until the end of April (However, the sooner the better). But that's just semantics because I agree at some point there is a major proportion of this population that cannot survive.


    I have been watching Martin Ciccioli visit these under priviledged barrios on El Trece the last couple of weeks. For a start, his foot on the ground reporting has been highlighting the plight of these areas for several years and it's the kind of interesting reporting that is sorely missing in Argentina (opinions on the journalist aside). Those people who are already living in squalor are now in an even more precarious situation.

    Quote from JAN

    Going through this whole mess and difficult times for whole world, the one thought that crossed my mind: what would have happened if no steps was taken anywhere to prevent the spread?????

    It would have spread like a fireball and killed millions probably.....but still a small percentage probably......but it would have done it's job and moved on and all would have been over in just a month or two maybe!!!! It's very cold hearted to think about......but what is ahead of us, globally, is a real disaster....And it will drag on and kill directly but also indirectly........

    To be sincere.....I really would have preferred the first option now when I see and realize the chaos that is ahead of the whole planet!

    I have also given thought to that scenario!!! It just boggles the mind as to what the world death toll would have been and as to the power struggles that covid-19 would surely, and will create. As for a sobering thought, the USA surpassed the 900 mark for a one day total death, and the ER's are overflowing. It is an invisible enemy, that the human species is facing, either through fear, or just downright stupidity. I for one, do not believe, this virus really gives a damn what one's religious preference is, unlike some comments on TV and Facebook, stating otherwise. Rant over with!!!!

    • Official Post
    Quote from UK Man

    I suspect the warmer weather has probably helped greatly here. The southern hemisphere doesn't seem to have suffered too badly compared to the north. Here's hoping that continues.

    I don't think that the weather is to praise. There is less testing, less medical facilities and less interest toward poor people in South America. Our numbers will be low in the end, but only because unreported.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Rice

    But if unreported, then in the end, the numbers will be high - - numbers flooding hospitals, numbers of the dead.

    Yes, they should be high unless they are unreported, too.


    For example, even in Italy it is estimated that there are more deaths to coronavirus than reported because many people died at home without being tested at all because simply there is no time/resource/point in doing so, so they are not accounted as 'deaths due to coronavirus'.


    As for flooding hospitals, for now there has been no report on the hospital situation in Argentina, and when I mean NO REPORT I don't mean "low numbers" or "all good, people!", I mean literally ZERO word on the patient load in ICUs, which is why it is suspicious.


    What are the journalists asking about, besides how are doing Argentinian football players in Italy and Spain?!



    Quote from Clarín

    “No se puede combatir un incendio con los ojos vendados, no podemos detener esta pandemia si no sabemos quién está infectado. Tenemos un mensaje simple para todos los países: test, test, test”.

    La frase le pertenece a Tedros Adhanom, director de la Organización Mundial de la Salud, quien hace dos semanas alertó sobre la pasividad de las naciones y la ausencia de estrategias para relevar con precisión los casos positivos de coronavirus y, en consecuencia, detener su propagación.

    serafina .......there is absolutely no logic behind believing any of the information that is distributed in Argentina, sorry!!!! As I mentioned to splinter, the head of the whole health system, Gines Gonzalez Garcia, have been turning around 180 degrees a few times only in the last 30 days.....putting out fat fat lies and totally misleading status of the country. By a simple Google search in the news, you will see the totally ridiculous statements he have brought out! And that is the health minister, the top head in these matters, probably directly under the guidance of Alberto. Anyone that just believe one word of what he and his boss is saying, I cannot help!!!! This is not Denmark or Switzerland, where you will be hold accountable for your sayings, promises or performance.

    How many is infected, how many have already died here and how future look, only God knows!!!

    But just from speaking to my neighbors, I can already count 5 or more of their relatives that have died....and I'm talking about a quite small circle.