The initial reaction to covid was probably the right one(let history decide) - the ongoing reaction is an economic own goal - a stupendous achievement in self destruction for no good reason.
Population of earth - 7.6billion. Average life expectancy - just over 72 years. So mathematically speaking about 105million people die per year(if population was evenly distributed by age - it is not- real figure is lower). So about 50-60m people have died from all causes so far this year. Covid has killed 800K or about 1.6%. From a WSJ article a few weeks ago the median age of death for covid in the US was 80.
So we are locking down the world because 1.6% of all deaths are from covid and it is killing people around the age they usually die. Sounds a bit like the flu (etc) to me.
The naysayers will go "yeah but if we hadn't locked down it would be much worse". Ok - we can rely on mathematical models OR we can look at a real world 'model' - Sweden.
Sweden - popn 10.3m - life expectancy 82. so mathematically speaking they should have lost say 60-70,000 from all causes in the last 6-7 months. They have lost just over 5,800 due to covid. So less than 10% of the normal number of deaths have died of covid - median age of deaths is 84. Eighty nine percent of all deaths were 70 and over. Their rate of infections/death is very low now - no second wave. strange huh? (sarcasm alert)
Next argument - they didn't want to overwhelm the health system. Ok - Sweden again - they have about 25,000 hospital beds, They have had a total of 85K positive diagnoses of covid. Worldwide approx 80% or more of covid cases are either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. So if 20% needed hospitalisation then that means 17,000 beds needed. And let's face it- those 85K cases were spread over time though peaking a few months ago. So perhaps at its peak maybe 10,000 beds were needed - or 40% of them? So is that overwhelming the health system?
Victoria Australia. They have a population of 6.4m - which means, mathematically speaking, about 219 people should die per day. They have lost a total of nearly two days worth of deaths due to covid. So that works out to be about 1% or so - 2 days out of the last 200 or so.
Australia had 7,500 ventilators before covid- they rushed out and bought another 2,500. As of a week or two ago, Victoria was using 42 of them - so only 9,960 spare - lucky they are in level 4 lockdown.
And I don't know the long term stats but I will make an assumption about nursing homes. I will assume most in there are 70-90 and average longevity is 80. I will assume they are no more or less healthy than those aged 70-90 outside nursing homes. Well with 6.4m people you would expect, very roughly, about 800,000 or more to be in that bracket (very very rough guesstimate). If the average age of morality is 80, then you would expect up to 10% of them to die per year- which is up to 80,000 of them per year. or say 40,000 in the last 6 or so months. Victoria has had, what , around 400 deaths due to covid. So about 1%.
Clearly i am missing something about Victoria- maybe it is just state premiers being able to exercise, and abuse, power for the first time since federation almost 120 years ago.