* What law? In the US, the lockdowns were under emergency powers of the executive branch, which are supposed to only last a limited time (30 days where I am, for example). Several of these were challenged and found to be unlawful.
* The US lockdowns were originally only mean to prevent hospitals from being overloaded. We are way way past that point where that was an issue - all the emergency capacity has been dismantled for months.
* As sibling comment implies, something like half the states in the US aren't under any lockdown now, businesses there aren't having issues staying open, and their stats are no worse than the locked-down states.
* Speaking of preventable deaths, suicide and overdose are climbing where lockdowns are still in place.
In the U.S., the lockdowns were issued in compliance with local laws. As you could easily learn for yourself, those vary from state to state and city to city so you can't make a blanket statement without being incorrect. In the context of this thread, you specifically referred to “ignoring close orders” which implicitly acknowledges the existence of an order issued by someone with the authority to do so under current law.
In some cases there have been legal challenges to those laws so there aren't givens but even if those are successful, my point was that even if you do re-open you can't force customers to come back when they feel unsafe. Even in the states where restrictions have been relaxed, a large number of people are not comfortable hanging out at a bar or restaurant — the problem being the risk of a serious disease, not the countermeasures deployed against it.
> The US lockdowns were originally only mean to prevent hospitals from being overloaded. We are way way past that point where that was an issue - all the emergency capacity has been dismantled for months.
The lockdowns were, as clearly communicated at the time, intended to slow community spread. Avoiding hospital overload was part of that but so was avoiding large numbers of people getting a serious disease with potentially life-changing impact when they don't need to.
> As sibling comment implies, something like half the states in the US aren't under any lockdown now, businesses there aren't having issues staying open, and their stats are no worse than the locked-down states.
And that commenter was wrong just like you are wrong. Anyone who follows this issue knows that the cases have been rising recently (~35%) and there's a noticeable correlation with the states which re-opened high risk activities and those who did not.
For example, they mentioned South Dakota which is at an all-time peak:
A common cause of error here are people looking at the all-time cumulative stats rather than the last week or two and missing that while, say, NYC was hit early with quick community spread in a dense environment and thus had a brutal spring but the increased lockdown have kept levels low since then.
* What law? In the US, the lockdowns were under emergency powers of the executive branch, which are supposed to only last a limited time (30 days where I am, for example). Several of these were challenged and found to be unlawful.
* The US lockdowns were originally only mean to prevent hospitals from being overloaded. We are way way past that point where that was an issue - all the emergency capacity has been dismantled for months.
* As sibling comment implies, something like half the states in the US aren't under any lockdown now, businesses there aren't having issues staying open, and their stats are no worse than the locked-down states.
* Speaking of preventable deaths, suicide and overdose are climbing where lockdowns are still in place.