IMO the crude initial lockdowns were a blunt tool & I’m not sure how much marginal impact they had on pub health given the huge behavioural change underway anyway. But those activists who call themselves “lockdown sceptics” have just been intellectually dishonest throughout Covid

They shifted from being skeptical of lockdown to opposing almost any public health measure (even voluntary) such as mask wearing. In fact they oppose all the voluntary changes to behaviour (working from home etc) that lean towards more sustainable containment in the near term.

They either don’t understand the endogeneity problem or willingly ignore it, taking results under the current policy and behavioural regime as proof positive that the virus isn’t dangerous and so we can return to normal. Would fail economics on that alone.

They move seamlessly, day by day, minute by minute from claiming that it’s just like like a flu, to “it’s worse than a flu but we are near herd immunity anyway,” then back to an unwillingness to do anything even when it’s clear things rebounding because we clearly don’t have HI.

They manipulate statistics, cherry pick pieces of evidence to fit their end goal of what? normality? They claim they just want freedom but then oppose people voluntarily altering their lives. It’s difficult just not to conclude that a lot of them just can’t deal with realities.

And that’s fine. This has been a tough year for a lot of people and people who did well out of “normal life” have been hard hit. But you won’t and can’t escape that with wishful thinking, speculative theories and just willing things to be normal again.