Exactly, at some point the cure will become worse than the disease. The fact this makes people uncomfortable is no reason to push it under the rug!
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It’s hard to confidently assert that the cure is worse than the disease if we don’t know the long-term effects of the disease yet. (Which is why we’re discussing the Lancet article.)
How many years of lockdown will people put up with?
I could see some places where someone’s entire childhood memory is being under lockdown.
If an actual proper hard lockdown is done, it takes only a matter of weeks.
COVID-19 has only existed as a problem for less than twenty months - what childhood is that short? And even if that statement had some relation to reality, anyone would take a childhood lockdown vs a lifetime of impairment (&, yes I get that lockdown itself can have some long-term effects, but these are much more easily counteracted vs biological deficits).
Yes, intellectually speaking, 20 months is not an entire childhood. But from a relative perspective- let’s take a five year old- that’s about 40% of his lifetime to date. That feels very significant to him/her.
That said, having kids that age, I would say my kids handled this pandemic way better than most adults. They adapt quicker and don’t have the emotional baggage (“masks are an evil plot to control the population” for example) to get through.
We have been lucky that they were able to attend school in person though - very strict COVID protocols plus a small population ensured that we never had an outbreak. Things would have been different if we didn’t have that ability.
ok, even if we are talking about a significant part of lifetime to date, it is still a pretty well-spoilt view from any historical perspective.
And even new variants and vaccine delays cause us to get to years of lockdown that actually constitutes significant portions of full childhoods, are you arguing that childhoods full of funerals and an adulthood full of diminished mental capacity [1] and COVID sequalae are better?
The 'modern' world is not a stable reality, it is a priveliged bubble. In general, and throughout most of history, it is a harsh place with most things trying to kill us. Having to simply take protective measures is as old as humanity, from standing guard through the night watching for other apex predators, to avoiding invaders and plagues, it is a part of what it is to be human (and not even to mention how much easier it is then for other creatures). To view any alteration to our modern routines due to actual biological reality as some injustice is provileged and myopic. Better to turn it into a teaching moment and illustrate how it is a part of history, and in this case, a very mild version of what was previously endured.
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5...