Early lockdowns while cases are still very low only make sense when a country goes for an elimination strategy, like Australia or New Zealand did. But that's only feasible for geographically isolated countries (AUS/NZ/TWN/SGP), or dictatorships aided by tropical climate and a low degree of urbanization (Thailand/Vietnam.) Considering the long, unprotected land borders, this approach was never promising for Europe or the United States. Even more so when we factor in the lack of discipline and compliance among Western populations.

Lack of discipline ? Lockdown must happen 1 or 2 weeks earlier.
Lockdown decision depends of too many factors to stick on "only if" or "very that" imo. It's also political, beyond death toll.

Would be so bad for Germany to waste the record-low deaths they had vs others european countries, thus i noticed your country piked yesterday with more than 900 deads ?
So what can you say now ? Maybe wait a bit more deaths/day or do you think this damn lockdown was finally decided at the right time ? (i'm getting tired of this discussion, i want my time back)

Our worst affected state suffered from an IT glitch two days ago and therefore didnt report its deaths that day. These missing deaths were added the next day, inflating its daily number. Without this reporting delay, yesterday's number would have been around 700. Which is still quite high, but not out of line with last week's numbers in the 500-600 range. It's always best to look at 7-day averages where this type of noise is evened out.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 16 2020 08:06am

Oh, so how long you think your country should have wait before before deciding a strong-ish lockdown ? Or maybe not closing schools ?

Like I already said multiple times: if we had enacted our mild restrictions two weeks earlier, we could have gotten to the after-christmas-lockdown quite comfortably. Once our state PMs decided against that, we should have waited until after christmas nonetheless, because store closures the week before christmas are absolutely devastating. If decision-makers had thought that closing stores and schools will become inevitable at some point (something I disagree with), then they should have done so in November, like many of our European neighbors.

Ok so you point was a light lockdown done earlier. Yeah. Honestly i don't know. Maybe it's half true.

I understand what you’re saying

I would hope that the actions are based off rational and logical metrics. Having no insight into your situation aside from what you’re telling me, at first glance it seems odd. Maybe their models are taking into account what an actual xmas spike would look like which would risk hospital saturation? Idk but I get your point




Lol no , this position is the general consensus. Lock downs were ALWAYS intended to mitigate risk of hospital saturation. To be clear Germany and America are in 2 different places

This post was edited by Bazi on Dec 16 2020 08:37am

Maybe you think that an earlier but "75%" instead of "100%" lockdown could have been a better decision but do you remember the animation i posted earlier in this topic ? That a simple "25%" can jeoparize it so much.
Maybe your central governement solution was optimal, i guess they followed experts modelizations.



"always" and "only" are two different words.
Lockdown are not "ONLY" intended to avoid hospitals saturation, they can be done earlier for different reasons.
Including saving more lives (keks lolipop).

I'm closely following the publicly available data and opinions, but I would assume that our decision-makers have access to more up-to-date or detailed data and info. Nonetheless, the absolutely chaotic communication by our political leadership over the past 10 days doesnt project confidence or expertise. They seemed to be in disarray and panicked by the recent and unexpected increase in cases (after the month-long plateau we had previously).

At the start of last week, all the stops were pulled and a concerted PR effort was conducted on all media and TV channels to sell the after-christmas lockdown to the public. For example, our national academy of the sciences came out with a statement calling for a hard lockdown after christmas. The mainstream media suddenly published article after article where various experts, politicians and leaders were calling for the same. It all seemed professional and preplanned. Then, by the middle of the week, panic noticably set in. Local governments were passing minor tightenings of the restrictions, only to call for even more restrictions mere hours later. The news cycles went into a total frenzy, culminating in the Sunday announcement that the country has to go into lockdown starting on Dec 16 (today) instead of Dec 27 like originally planned.

That this development was driven by panic rather than a cool head is not just my personal, potentially biased impression. One of our major newspapers published an article titled "all of a sudden, the politicians are even quicker [with their decision for a lockdown] than scientists had called for".



It's puzzling, but I probably have to accept that my ability to understand the background of this development/decision is limited; I'm just a commoner without insider knowledge after all.