Watching people spin out Zero Covid “what if” fantasies is tedious and boring. It’s just the most useless thing. There was never even a ghost of a chance of India and other poorer places locking down long enough to halt community spread. They simply could not. And anyway, humans are not the only host for SARS-Cov-2, so lockdown would always by “mysteriously” breached in most places.

The best we could’ve done — while harming billions — would be slowing the spread a little. That’s the very best. Instead, we got Zero Covid fantasists complaining about people not locking down hard enough, long enough, instead of concentrating on real mitigations like better ventilation, contact tracing, getting vaccination and vaccination mandates done, etc.

Of course, the Zero Covid fantasy also leads to to recurring (and probably perpetually-recurring) lockdowns and prison countries. But I think the lockdown lifers see all of this as a feature rather than a bug. For many of them, this has come to be about more than just preventing Covid. It’s a new religion and the god of pointless sacrifice must be worshipped.