The US situation is really interesting and I don't know what to make of it. I mean individual state responses make things harder to keep track of and to analyse, but it's clear that as a country they have come under incredible flack for some centralised decisions and some decisions of the states. While many have been under some form of lockdown, some have gone about their business throughout. Their deaths per million remain slightly below that of the UK. But you wonder how many died needlessly .
What the US makes me wonder, is that do lockdowns actually do anything? I mean on the surface they must, without packed pubs and stadiums surely less human interaction is less transmission, but we still ended up where we did didn't we? Here comes the massive hand wavey theory; an average person gives covid to about 3 people. In reality this varies a lot, many people are thought not to transmit to anyone at all, and covid is thought to have a low k number, which means less people transmit a bit more which leads to cluster explosions, which we're seeing. So I suppose that under lockdown rules people will still see a very few people, either within our without the rules and the damage is done; just because you could see many more under no restrictions doesn't mean you pass it to more.
I have a hankering feeling that covid explodes in pockets and naturally burns out, that burnout led more by climate and now, crucially, rate of vaccination. Just an opinion.
