Yet you continually compare one region to another. You got yourself twisted up like a pretzel trying to justify the obviously failing shutdown policies. You deny the science that humans are social beings. Take away the public, proven to be remarkably safe public gathering places, then people with then gather in a more private setting which have been proven to be considerably more risky according to every single study.
There are only two ways to effectively change our primal need to socialize. Fear, or reward, that's it. In this case you can't provide enough of a guaranteed reward, nor can you create enough fear considering only a mimiscual number of people are dying from Covid in relation to the overall population, and the majority of that tiny number of people are in terrible health to begin with. Those are just the indisputable facts.
First let's address... once again... the comparison of raw numbers. To claim that South Dakota has only 1,446 COVID deaths while California has 24,529 deaths --- and therefore South Dakota is doing better than California due to the raw numbers without accounting for population is absurd. California has a population that is approximately 40 times that of South Dakota (40M compared to 900,000) -- showing that the COVID death rate per population percentage in CA is .06% while in South Dakota it is 0.16%. The overall COVID death rate in South Dakota is 2.6 times worse over the complete timeframe.
It makes sense to compare the percentages of deaths, hospitalizations, cases, etc. when comparing the COVID public policy responses of two different states to arrive at a meaningful comparison. This allows meaningful comparisons to show the effectiveness of public health policies enacting during various timeframes. This will show if mask mandates, etc. are effective or not based on meaningful comparisons. More advanced models will also consider factors such as population density, average temperature, average people per household, hospital access, and other factors in making comparisons. Of course the best public health policy comparison will be to find two states/countries that are very similar in demographics, temperature, etc. but have different public health policies and take a look at the results based on percentages of the population. A proper example of this is Sweden and its direct neighbors.
I agree that humans have the urge to socialize. The question becomes if public health policy mandates can ensure the temporary reduction in socialization (by shutting restaurants, & entertainment down, gathering number limits, etc. for a few months) to improve the public health situation. For COVID the intent is to enact these restrictive measures when community spread is large -- and there is an end-game in sight with the vaccinations.
The 1918 flu epidemic faced the same situation with cities/counties/regions with different public health policies, flu skeptics, anti-maskers, churches demanding religious exemptions, non-compliance, and many of the same things we are seeing today. The bottom line however is that the cities that implemented the best public health policies for the 1918 Flu not only minimized death & suffering but also had the best economic performance and recovery.
The bottom line is that lockdowns and restrictions work when facing a global pandemic -- this is proven historically and today. Compliance is an issue -- as can be seen on the evening news with hordes of people wandering around in California without masks. Government leadership matters - the state/local leaders who follow the best public health polices and can lead their residents to follow them will have the best public health and economic recovery results.
