| > Why were lockdowns so unquestionably pushed? If memory serves me right, early on in the pandemic, the health care systems of a number of countries and cities (e.g. Italy, NYC) were completely overwhelmed by infected individuals with severe respiratory illnesses, many of whom needed several days of ventilator treatment to survive. Many aspects of society in these areas ceased to function because of the effects of the virus itself (and the effective collapse of the health care system). Support for government mandates grew out of a desire to mitigate the effects of the virus. In the US, after a pretty devastating March 2020, government mandates were largely left to the states, meaning that states/cities more strongly affected by COVID were able to choose stronger mitigation strategies and vice-versa. After we learned more about the virus, after a vaccine was developed & released, and after the virus mercifully mutated into a less lethal version of itself, the likelihood repeating the same sort of shock on the healthcare system dropped. Many states had already lifted their restrictions in 2020, and states that were hit harder early (e.g. NY, CA) gradually lifted their restrictions throughout 2021. I interpret Dr. Birx's quote to suggest that she believed that "fifteen days" time was not enough time to slow the spread, and that this was the largest span of time for which she was able to obtain authorization. The later expansion to "thirty days to slow the spread" suggests that Dr. Birx was correct. I'll also note that, the following month, the President of the United States suggested that citizens should "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" of their mask mandates and business restrictions. From this, your claim that mask mandates were "unquestionably pushed" seems inaccurate to me. On the contrary -- the first year of the pandemic was a perpetual deliberation on the effectiveness of mitigation strategies. Lockdown strategies continue to be debated despite lockdowns being basically nonexistent in most of the US now. |