Globally, politicians are not out to get you, frankly my prime minister was dead set against locking down (for economic reasons) but when the forecasts came in he relented very viscerally. You have to understand on some level that nearly every government (with the notable exception of Sweden) has reacted similarly to this pandemic.
The Economic impact of the increased deaths of this magnitude (and second factors such as normally preventable deaths which are not handled due to an over-capacity health system) would cause such economic upheaval that society might break down.
From the most self-serving politician to the most charitable; one thing they will agree on is to maintain the status quo in some form and that is put at risk if we reach 1918 levels of deaths (or higher).
I highly recommend the Dark Winter study by Johns Hopkins[0], it's exceptionally well researched and goes into detail about how fragile we've built the world to be.
For example: "Just-in-time" is the latest incarnation of capitalist efficiency that leaves very little capacity to function if there is a large disruption.
The test largely focused on an intentional outbreak of smallpox, but they wrote extensively about variable mortality and the r-naught value and how the effects work when you slide those scales.
Globally, politicians are not out to get you, frankly my prime minister was dead set against locking down (for economic reasons) but when the forecasts came in he relented very viscerally. You have to understand on some level that nearly every government (with the notable exception of Sweden) has reacted similarly to this pandemic.
The Economic impact of the increased deaths of this magnitude (and second factors such as normally preventable deaths which are not handled due to an over-capacity health system) would cause such economic upheaval that society might break down.
From the most self-serving politician to the most charitable; one thing they will agree on is to maintain the status quo in some form and that is put at risk if we reach 1918 levels of deaths (or higher).
I highly recommend the Dark Winter study by Johns Hopkins[0], it's exceptionally well researched and goes into detail about how fragile we've built the world to be.
For example: "Just-in-time" is the latest incarnation of capitalist efficiency that leaves very little capacity to function if there is a large disruption.
The test largely focused on an intentional outbreak of smallpox, but they wrote extensively about variable mortality and the r-naught value and how the effects work when you slide those scales.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Dark_Winter