[legion]

This virus has been circulating through the population much longer than originally thought. There's no way we'd be seeing antibody numbers in the 20-30% range in CA and NY if that wasn't the case. The official numbers show a sharp increase in cased in March-April, but that is mostly because testing picked up at an exponential rate. The rate at which this virus spread was much lower and it took health officials 4 months to even notice it. What scared them was the death rate in Italy, where over half of the population of the country is in the "extremely vulnerable" category.

As this virus has been out and circulating much longer than thought, the lockdowns are akin to closing the barn door after your neighbor stolen, butchered, and sold your pigs. It cannot be contained, but many people's lives have been ruined trying.

The lockdowns also do nothing to save lives by themselves. There merely shift when people will die. What will save lives is keeping those that are vulnerable separated from the virus until there is a vaccine or herd immunity. Waiting for a vaccine is impractical, will destroy more lives, and there is no guarantee there will ever be one. The better strategy is to let the virus circulate freely, let a herd immunity develop, let people be free and go about their lives, and advise those that are vulnerable to self-isolate.

We should have never shut the country down over this.