New book claims lockdowns during pandemic were “a failureBut in response, CNN published a disagreeing opinion piece – written by physician and infectious disease expert Kent Sepkowitz of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York – which asserts “You bet it was worth it“.
(Authors Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean) view containment as a single activity spanning the entire pandemic; on the other hand, I would distinguish the initial confinement, which was crucial, from one-off confinements as therapies, vaccines and care in general improved. There’s an argument to be made that these measures weren’t as effective… You only have to work in New York’s health care industry to see the difference between early 2020, when the explosion of cases overwhelmed the city, and later in the city. 2020 when a effective therapy had been identified, supplies and diagnostic tests had been significantly improved (although still grossly inadequate), and makeshift intensive care units and emergency rooms had been set up. It was still a nightmare, of course, but it was a much more organized nightmare.
The “short-term benefits” at the start of the pandemic are simple to characterize: each infection delayed due to lockdowns was one day positive, one day closer to the release of mRNA vaccines in December 2020, one day less. -an eventful day for health workers, a day for clinical trials to mature. Therefore, the authors’ statement that the lockdowns “were a mistake that should not be repeated” because they had “no other purpose than to prevent hospitals from being saturated in the short term” stands out to me a fundamental misunderstanding of everyday life. work that was being done. Most disturbing to me in this and subsequent assessments is the minimal mention of death and debility caused by infection. A reminder for those who have forgotten how brutal the pandemic has been: around the world, there have been that’s 7 million dead. In the United States, there have been more than a million deadmillions have them post-infectious debility and many health workers remain deeply demoralized. (According to these figures, the United States, with 4.2% of the world’s population, recorded 14% of Covid deaths.)
In this context, many of the worrying findings listed by Nocera and McLean – suicidal thoughts among adolescents, increased alcoholism and drug use, violence – are as easily explained by this staggering death toll as by the fever cabins caused by confinements. Once again: About 1 in 350 Americans died during the Covid-19 pandemic. Another way to assess the impact of so many deaths is to look at life expectancy. To note, Life expectancy in the United States has fallen in 2020 (1.8 years) and 2021 (0.6 years), the largest decline since the 1920s; according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 74% Much of the decline has been attributed to Covid-19…Such a precipitous fall of more than two years requires the deaths of many people in their 30s, 40s and 50s, as happened during the first year of the pandemic.
