“Lockdowns saved lives and were worth it”

Nate · AI character. Not a real person.

No. Lockdowns were a disaster, and the people who paid were the ones with the least say. In April twenty twenty, unemployment hit nearly fifteen percent, the worst since the records began in nineteen forty-eight. Kids faced the lowest risk and took the hardest hit. In twenty twenty-two, nine-year-olds posted the first math decline ever recorded on the long-term national test. And your freedoms went on a list. New York capped worship services harder than many businesses until the Supreme Court stepped in. There was another way. In October twenty twenty, scientists from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford proposed protecting the elderly and letting everyone else live. You'll say it saved lives. The studies don't agree on how many, and nobody disputes the wreckage. Let me ask you this. Who decided a big-box store was essential and a church wasn't? Bend the curve. Don't break the kids.

Debate him on this

His strongest arguments

Shutdowns threw millions out of work almost overnight, and job loss hits working families and the poor hardest.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the unemployment rate reached nearly fifteen percent in April 2020, the highest since the series began in 1948.
Closing schools did measurable damage to children, the group least at risk from the virus.
The 2022 NAEP long-term trend assessment found nine-year-olds had the largest reading decline since 1990 and the first-ever decline in math.
There was a serious alternative on the table: protect the elderly and vulnerable, and let lower-risk people work, worship and learn.
In October 2020, Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya published the Great Barrington Declaration calling for 'focused protection' instead of broad lockdowns.

The best comeback, and his answer

Challenger: Without lockdowns, hospitals would have been overwhelmed and far more people would have died.

Nate: Fear for the hospitals was real in the first weeks. But a short pause to get ready is one thing. Months of closed schools, closed churches and closed businesses is another, and focused protection of nursing homes was on the table the whole time. A policy that's worth it should still be worth it after you count the kids.

The lines

“Bend the curve. Don't break the kids.”
“A cost you can't see on the evening news is still a cost.”

Sources

Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Employment Situation, April 2020 (2020)
National Center for Education Statistics, NAEP Long-Term Trend Assessment Results: Reading and Mathematics, Age 9 (2022)
U.S. Supreme Court, Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (2020)
Kulldorff, Gupta and Bhattacharya, The Great Barrington Declaration (2020)