[doublemint2203]

further, if your last question is not rhetorical, I support them in retrospect because I view things from an apolitical lens and think it was the best attempt at a societal cooperation to save lives. Yes, there were negative results, but there were also overflowing hospitals in 99.9% of the country

[0xy]

If you wanted to protect hospitals, then why were 15 year olds locked down and not primarily old and obese people (the vast, vast majority of the risk).

15 years old took the brunt of the lockdowns yet had almost zero risk from the virus.

Why is that? Shouldn't the people at actual risk of the virus shelter themselves?

The difference in risk between a healthy 15 year old and an obese 85 year old is orders of magnitude different. The virus might as well be the common cold to the former.

[TMWNN]

>but there were also overflowing hospitals in 99.9% of the country

Italian and New York hospitals were overwhelmed because a) both places put sick elderly into old age homes. (42% of US COVID19 deaths in 2020 occurred in old age homes!) b) Like elsewhere early on, doctors put everyone serious onto ventilators in a mistaken belief that they should treat patients like they do ARDS cases based on blood oxygen levels. This damaged healthy lung sacs and caused long-term dependence on mechanical respiration that doctors found almost impossible to wean patients from, and other side effects like deep vein thrombosis; Nick Cordero is an example. (This article from April 2020 <https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-...> was completely vindicated in retrospect.) Neither happened after the first few months.

And no, none of those field hospitals built in parking lots and stadiums everywhere were used. In Wales, for example, Millennium Stadium was converted into a temporary field hospital with 300 beds and capacity to expand to 2000 beds. It was such a big deal that a public contest was held to name it Dragon's Heart Hospital <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Heart_Hospital>. However, said hospital never had more than 46 patients at one time, and was closed in six weeks for lack of use!

Even in NYC, which really did see overloaded hospitals briefly in March-April 2020, USNS Comfort treated a total of 179 patients. USNS Mercy treated a total of 77 patients in LA.

[wyager]

> there were also overflowing hospitals in 99.9% of the country

The hysteria over "overflowing hospitals" was mostly due to people not understanding the base rate of hospital occupancy, or how hospitals account for occupancy limits in general.

In reality, utilization of the medical system collapsed because people were scared to go to the hospital for routine medicine. Whether that was net positive or negative depends on how iatrogenic risks interact with the selection effects in play at the time.

[bryanlarsen]

Yes, the hospitals were quieter during the initial lockdown. However peak COVID deaths and hospital overload was in 2022. Our local hospital experienced 2 nurse suicides in 2022.