The Years of Covid – Focused Protection

SARS-CoV-2 is a dangerous virus, especially to elderly or otherwise vulnerable people: there's no doubt about that.

Almost the entirety of 2020 was spent fighting it, and since large-scale fighting is always carried out by governments, the details of the struggle have quickly become heavily politicized.

Therefore, I'm aware that my opinion on government responses to the coronavirus pandemic might ruffle feathers. Nevertheless, I hope that it makes some readers consider the non-mainstream takes below.

One thing that seems to be a fact accepted by everyone is that the virus is way more dangerous to older people and those with pre-existing conditions. As they have weaker immune systems, this is not surprising. What's shocking is the proportion between the risks in various age groups.

We know this from the very beginning of the pandemic. Yet, governments, almost universally, imposed a general lockdown on their population. This makes very little sense, even if we only focus on the physical well-being of the elderly. If younger people can freely move, contract the disease, and defeat it, they'll act as shields against passing on the disease to their older relatives.

(The term "focused protection" comes from The Great Barrington Declaration, a policy recommendation that I've found very sensible.)

Most governments failed to protect the elderly in nursing homes when the pandemic broke out. In Sweden, for example, almost half of all the first wave coronavirus deaths happened in nursing homes.

All the resources that were wasted upholding inane regulations could have been spent on helping and protecting the vulnerable.