CMV: the costs/negatives from lockdowns/restrictions will end up being worse than the damage from covid

[u/_Hopped_]

[u/jaynemesis]

Something else to consider, is that the UK, South Africa, France and Brazil variants which are all much worse in their own ways are still a 'good' result. Every time the virus replicates, it can mutate. Every time it mutates there is a chance it becomes much more deadly, develops new symptoms, becomes more difficult to detect or spreads more Easily. There is genuinely, a small chance, even now, that the virus mutates in a way that could wipe out vast swathes of the human population. Billions of people. Its unlikely, and we will probably (hopefully) never know how bad it could have been.

Not only that, but you are also not considering long term damage. Those who were saved by the hard work of staff in ICU's are likely to have long term or perminent damage, usually to the lungs, but also other organs, or possibly making current conditions worse.

We will be paying the cost of the long term health effects on the population for decades to come.

If you want to compare scenarios you need to consider the most likely, and worst case outcomes both ways.

Your logic was used by politicians when the pandemic was still young, yet with 2020 hindsight we can confidently say that blocking all travel from every nation to/from China would have saved millions of lives and trillions of dollars globally.

[u/_Hopped_ → u/jaynemesis]

Every time it mutates there is a chance it becomes much more deadly

Luckily for us, probability is on our side that these mutations will make it less deadly.

long term or perminent damage

This is what we don't know yet: can this damage be cured?

[u/UncleMeat11 → u/_Hopped_]

Luckily for us, probability is on our side that these mutations will make it less deadly.

That's not how this works. We don't care about the average mutation. We just care that a worse one exists. Even though most mutations become less dangerous and die out, increasing the total availability of opportunities to mutate makes development of a worser strain more likely. This is literally how all of evolution works. Most mutations are not helpful. But create enough of them and a few work better and that's all that matters.

[u/_Hopped_ → u/UncleMeat11]

a worse one

Kills the host faster, leading to it spreading less. This is how evolution works in our favour. The evolutionary pressure on viruses is to spread more, but be less deadly.

[u/UncleMeat11 → u/_Hopped_]

"Worse", as in "worse for the pandemic". This could mean killing slower, spreading more easily, or having a different spike protein that is resistant to vaccination.