Where did you stand on the lockdowns?

[Chips]

I'm curious to see how much anti-lockdown sentiment there was on Atlas when lockdowns and stay at home orders were being issued out left right and centers as I can't remember. But i'll say #3. I will also say I see who some were happy with the lockdowns and see why some were angry about them at the same time.

[Dr. MB]

I was against them then gradually moved toward being for them then back toward being against them more recently.

[mileslunn]

I am pro-lockdown.  Yes they are no fun and do have some negative side effects, but very effective if done right.  Main thing is you stay in lockdown until cases get very low as far too many places have re-opened too soon thus it comes right back.  Also important to lockdown as soon as any spike as many places waited too long and much tougher to bring under control when there are many cases vs. only a few.  Never mind longer lockdown is, more people will start breaking rules thus you want to implement it early enough you don't have to be in it for more than a month and only have to do once.

Unfortunately few places have successfully done this.  Lockdowns also need to be harsh with as few reasons as possible for people leaving their home and proper enforcement and strict penalties for non-compliance. 

[Beet]

I was for them and then gradually moved to no true opinion.

Lockdowns are an effective strategy if used early, selectively, and in conjunction with other tools. Putting everyone on blast only for the pandemic to come roaring back even stronger later is a recipie for loss of public support if you're a government official, and public support is necessary to implement lockdowns effectively.

[TheElectoralBoobyPrize]

Vehemently against from the beginning, but didn’t like how being anti-lockdown got equated with being anti-mask. Masks don’t hurt the economy so there was no reason to be against them.

[beesley]

Supported at the start.

[Averroës Nix]

Circumstances have pushed my views on this to an extreme. I was strongly against lockdown-style measures by the end of April 2020 and will oppose them categorically when the next pandemic occurs.

I would even support amending state and federal constitutions to bar many of the "emergency" measures that were justified in terms of weeks before dragging on for months. We have seen so many abuses over the past year that I have come to believe that government simply should not have that level of discretion.

Many have said that lockdowns need to be harsh and thorough to be effective. I never want to live under the rule of a government that has the state capacity to enforce lockdowns that are strong enough to work.

With all of that said, I think that the people of the United States are uniquely prepared to resist these encroachments on basic liberties like freedom of movement, freedom of worship, and freedom of association, especially outside of our major cities.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Against. Mask mandates and limiting crowd sizes/implementing capacity restrictions to enforce social distancing is fine, but full-blown lockdowns are too much.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I think this framing is way too simplistic, given the semantic confusion that is generated when one hears the word "lockdown". In broad terms, I was opposed to restricting people from congregating outside or in private households throughout the pandemic, somewhat supportive of restricting indoor dining or bars, somewhat opposed to restricting church attendance and very opposed to closing schools. In all cases, I supported minimizing the duration of these restrictions as much as possible.

I am far more supportive of NPIs in wealthy countries than in poor countries. In all cases, I support prohibiting truly mass gatherings. Idk, this issue does not really lend itself to simplicity? Overall though, I have been something of a lockdown skeptic...

[Ferguson97]

Support (sane)

[jamestroll]

Strongly opposed unless in a very localized circumstaces. I am afraid of the precendent the lockdowns have  set up and once the government obtains more power it is very rare for the government to give it up.

Also, there was a certain amount of goal post moving and seeing phrases like, "STAY AT HOME UNTIL COVID IS ERADICATED!", "WE MUST STOP ANY SPREAD OF THIS VIRUS!", "ZOMG!!! WE NEED MORE LOCKDOWNS THERE WAS A BREAK THROUGH VACCINE CASE!!" made me even more resistent to lockdowns.

And also all the liberals cheering on lockdowns could shooting themselves in the foot in one of their major public policies: economic inequality. Lockdowns obviously exacerbate inequality.

Also, I was opposed based on the logistics of enforcing wide scale lock downs.

[Schiff for Senate]

I strongly support the lockdown. Public health comes first. The foremost constitutional right is outlined by this excerpt from the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The government should intervene to stop people from endangering the general public. When people traverse unneccessarily and violate stay at home orders, and then go to essential places like grocery stores, they may endanger everyone who uses that grocery store. The government should issue a national mask mandate to go to public places, including grocery stores, where there may be a lot of people present.

[Vice President Christian Man]

I'm opposed to the idea and I have my doubts that it made a difference, but the states can do whatever they want with the matter.

[ElectionsGuy]

Strongly opposed. All the way through but especially after April. What is happening in Australia right now is such a tragedy and disgrace, and I'm thankful we're not them or France right now. The US became a country because of tyranny like this, and Democrats seem to cheer it on.

This issue has really made me question a lot of things. It's made me feel more alone than ever (in more ways than one, lol). I never thought I would be arguing with other libertarians on Twitter from prominent "think tanks" about how severe this actually is, or now that opposing mandatory vaccines somehow makes me an "anti-vaxxer". It's ludicrous. The assault on basic human liberty over a virus that kills and hospitalizes a tiny fraction of the population (disproportionately obese, old, unhealthy) I would think would unite a ton of people of different political backgrounds because I thought of it as a libertarian vs authoritarian thing, not left vs right. To say the least, it's been disappointing how many people I thought were my natural political allies, have been at best mixed on their views of this, and how many good leftists just fell into the cult of Fauci and co. Greenwald, Tracey and others have been some of the few holdouts of valuable insights and criticisms of the modern left and their authoritarian tendencies over the past two years. The right has been certainly better than the left on this issue but not strong enough in my view. Republican governors still did shutdowns that weren't justified, but DeSantis has been a beacon of what's needed in my view, and I have mixed views on his other policies, but I commend him for standing up against the lockdown mob in the media.

[afleitch]

Supportive.

The whole point of the lockdown was to ease pressure on the healthcare system. People talking about 'oh only x percent actually die' missed the whole point.

[Zinneke]

Circumstances have pushed my views on this to an extreme. I was strongly against lockdown-style measures by the end of April 2020 and will oppose them categorically when the next pandemic occurs.

I would even support amending state and federal constitutions to bar many of the "emergency" measures that were justified in terms of weeks before dragging on for months. We have seen so many abuses over the past year that I have come to believe that government simply should not have that level of discretion.

Many have said that lockdowns need to be harsh and thorough to be effective. I never want to live under the rule of a government that has the state capacity to enforce lockdowns that are strong enough to work.

You say that yet in a natural disaster you'd probably be the first one begging for a government to save your ass.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Lockdowns are necessary if we want to not cause massive avoidable death, so of course I support them.

[Zinneke]

You say that yet in a natural disaster you'd probably be the first one begging for a government to save your ass.

I have lived through natural disasters. There are a few relevant differences. Most importantly, natural disasters end. States of emergency extended indefinitely are another matter entirely.

I don't see how it differs when it comes to what we are actually debating about : the ability of government to regulate the levels of freedom of its citizens within a strict legal situation whereby their freedoms can restrict other peoples' freedoms.

If your libertarian pipe dream were to realise itself, whether its a hurricane or a pandemic, what exactly is stopping looters in the first case or, in the second case, people infected from not giving a sh**t about infecting you? Ah yes, that evil thing called government. Government is there to regulate freedoms and ensure they come with obligations, like not holding superspreader events during a pandemic.

The way to ensure you don't slip into dictatorship is by having powerful checks and balances, maintaining the democratic exercise throughout and not succumbing to sophistic bollox touted by lockdown sceptics, whether left or right. Nobody in the West had their door welded in.

[deleted by moderator]

[Zinneke]

And for the record I do think the modern western government model overregulates and overcomplicates on a vast array of subjects (partly to make sure their lawyer friends stay in jobs). That data mining and mass surveillance with new technologies is concerning. But when it comes to a worldwide pandemic, people need to be protected by dumber people.

[bore]

I was supportive in March, reluctantly supportive in December. Unconstrained spread of a virus with the severity of Covid in a virgin population would have been, and in the places where it occurred would was, a catastrophe, and sacrificing a month or two of the entire populations lives (and it is important to be clear that is what lockdown means, life without interaction is a form of low level torture) to dampen and ameliorate that spread was the least bad option.

But now we're in August, in almost every western country any adult who wishes to can and mostly have availed themselves of vaccines that are more than 95% effective for a virus with a death rate of about 1% and I wonder if I was too naive. We have open talk of doing this all again in the winter to alleviate seasonal strain on the health service, we have politicians mandating that pupils, who are at almost no risk of complications themselves, wear a mask all day in school at untold cost to their education, we have a life that is far less accountable (it is almost impossible now, for instance, to book a GP appointment) as each professions seize on this chance to make their own jobs easier. I worry that a turbo charging of what happened after 9/11 is under way, where public health bureaucrats take advantage of the populations statistical innumeracy to win the peace, in spite of their demonstrable failure in the heat of crisis, and are empowered to inflict immense pain on the public, most of all those on the margins, the lonely and the young.

[Zinneke]

I was supportive in March, reluctantly supportive in December. Unconstrained spread of a virus with the severity of Covid in a virgin population would have been, and in the places where it occurred would was, a catastrophe, and sacrificing a month or two of the entire populations lives (and it is important to be clear that is what lockdown means, life without interaction is a form of low level torture) to dampen and ameliorate that spread was the least bad option.

But now we're in August, in almost every western country any adult who wishes to can and mostly have availed themselves of vaccines that are more than 95% effective for a virus with a death rate of about 1% and I wonder if I was too naive. We have open talk of doing this all again in the winter to alleviate seasonal strain on the health service, we have politicians mandating that pupils, who are at almost no risk of complications themselves, wear a mask all day in school at untold cost to their education, we have a life that is far less accountable (it is almost impossible now, for instance, to book a GP appointment) as each professions seize on this chance to make their own jobs easier. I worry that a turbo charging of what happened after 9/11 is under way, where public health bureaucrats take advantage of the populations statistical innumeracy to win the peace, in spite of their demonstrable failure in the heat of crisis, and are empowered to inflict immense pain on the public, most of all those on the margins, the lonely and the young.

I have never understood the people who think there is a major, organized conspiracy from the public health bureaucrats to continue lockdown as long as possible. Are they on the extreme of the lockdown debate due to their overcautious nature? Yeah. Is there an active, provable conspiracy on the same scale as the military-industrial complex? Show. It. To. Me. Bush Jr, Haliburton, and the oil companies all did it in broad daylight. Meanwhile you guys are saying there is a big conspiracy amongst the public health bureaucrats because they somehow profit from this situation. Apart from public visibility they don't, and that public visibility makes them potentially hated by a majority of the population watching!

Show me the bread trail and I'll take the conspiracy seriously.

[CEO Mindset]

Opposed even early on. Having the healthy be locked down/quarantined didn't make any sense whatsoever.

[darklordoftech]

Eveey arguement that there’s a conspiracy to oppress people with lockdowns could also be used to argue that smoking is safe.

[beaver2.0]

In favor up until the vaccine became widespread (so maybe two months ago?)  There were always people that seemed to go overboard and imply we should basically become hermits last year and I opposed that as well.  Stay away from others and wear masks, yes, but we don't need to hide from the world while doing so.

[Benjamin Frank]

I wonder if those who support politicians like Paul LePage, and I'm sure there are many others, who now regard 'lockdowns' as oppressive, can explain how Paul LePage and the, I'm sure many others, also supported the forced quarantining of that heroic nurse who didn't have Ebola.

Every Republican governor and Donald Trump (and Maggie Hassan) also fear mongered over 10,000 refugees from Syria coming to America.

When it's somebody else, demagogue over imaginary safety concerns, when it's you who have to sacrifice as well for shared safety, complain about 'muh freedom.'