At this point I can't believe anyone is taking Bloop Bloop seriously and still engaging with him.
I disagree with Bloop on essentially every political topic you can come up with. I largely agree with him on this. The spreading of this disease like other things follows the 80/20 rule. In a study back in April in Victoria, 9% of the people caused 91% of the infections - there was one guy working at three different hospitality venues who spread it to 75 people. In an international study, 70% of those infected themselves infected no-one at all.
Some people, by virtue of their lifestyle or career, are likely to be superspreaders of a disease, and others are not. Any sensible strategy has to address the high-risk individuals. For example, in dealing with sexually-transmitted diseases, clinicians focus on getting contraception to sex workers and single people 15-25yo. Your 50yo married person will generally not spread it to as many people as a 20yo single might. A sensible and sustainable strategy has to focus on the small number of people who will cause the largest number of infections.
What I heard him say was that Sweden's strategy, in contrast to countries that did complete lockdowns, was meant to be sustainable, indefinitely, if necessary.
An important consideration which is largely ignored in many countries. The evidence is that there may be some aerosol transmission, the occasional dirty handrail and so on, but the vast bulk of infections come from,
- people in each-other's faces for sustained periods of time, and/or shouting/singing, with enclosed spaces improving the odds, and
- sharing food and drink
so those activities have to be minimised and/or monitored, whether voluntarily or by law.
Now, to what degree they should be reduced or banned, and for how long, that's up to argument. But I'd point again a couple of things. In the military there's a concept called "target fixation", where someone gets so focused on dealing with one target they fail to notice other threats. You're desperately trying to shoot down one plane and another one pops up from behind and takes you out. This can happen in public affairs, too.
Many things kill people, and the attention given them is not in proportion to the number of deaths. For example, firearms control advocates talk a lot about firearms homicides, but not much about firearms suicides - of which there are in most countries a much greater number. Unfortunately you can't focus on everything (that's pretty much the definition of "focus"), so something or someone will always be neglected. Such is life - and death.
Now in the US it's different, but Bloop is speaking from Australia. We had bushfires this year which killed about 100 people directly - but then just quietly a few months later it turns out that another 500 or so far away from the fires died of smoke-related stuff, mostly people like severe asthmatics, etc. So the true toll was 600 or so, not 100.
Likewise with covid and the lockdown. We've had about 100 deaths from covid. But the lockdown? Well, we're running at about 20% less road deaths, which if kept up for 12 months would be 240 people, great! And there are some less cardiac deaths - heart attacks go down during a recession as people are less stressed from work and commuting. So that's good.
But there are a lot more cancer deaths as the medical system discouraged people from getting ordinary checkups and followups. And one recent report was an extra 800 people had died from things like diabetes and dementia. Now, some have dismissed that as "well, they were going to die soon anyway" - but the same is said of covid deaths. I don't agree with it, but if you do, then you have to have consistent standards - you can't dismiss sickly elderly deaths from the lockdown but be worried about sickly elderly deaths from covid, or vice versa. Me, I worry about them both.
And of course, recessions see a rise in suicide and unintentional overdoses. Normally for each 1% rise in unemployment you get 1% more suicides and 3% more unintentional overdoses. However many thousands of these your country has, well you can do the arithmetic. Obviously even if you have no lockdowns the virus causes a recession so that might seem like it'll even out, we're no worse off. But right now the lockdown here means that we can't have any visitors at all, including from family. Normally during a recession people can lean on friends and family a bit. But now? They'll be alone.
My oldest is a paramedic. She's seeing a lot less road accidents, though a growing proportion pedestrians (as more people are out on foot as allowable excursions), but a lot more suicides, unintentional overdoses, and mental health episodes. There are people locked up with abusive spouses. Happy marriages turning mediocre, and mediocre marriages turning bad and breaking up - but they can't split right now, so they stay in the same house, and this is how we get domestic violence.
So the lockdown has a cost in lives and suffering, too. As I've said many times before, the Trolley Problem is illustrative - there's a runaway tram, 5 people on one track and 1 person on the other, you can change the track of the tram but can't stop it, do you let 1 person die or 5 people? That's a difficult decision, though clear enough. Politics is a giant Trolley Problem where you're dealing with thousands of lives. But you can't always see it's 5 or 1, the people are hidden in a fog so you just judge by the screaming. You can't know for sure the outcome until the tram passes, you make your way through the fog and count the bodies. It's a difficult business even for the mythical entirely benevolent and unselfish politician.
Right now, the covid victims are screaming very, very loudly through the fog. The suicides, the unintentional overdoses, the cancer patients, the domestic violence victims and broken marriages, these aren't making such a big noise.
Unfortunately our governments seem to have only two possible states: apathy and panic. I would suggest that between the apathy of the US response and the panic of the response of our state leaders here in Victoria, there is a vast middle ground of options and approaches. We're not politicians, we don't have to be apathetic, nor do we have to panic.