There is no evidence society would have collapsed. Many countries do not have the health infrastructure the US has and have not undergone societal collapse. Yes more elderly would have died. More people with comorbities would have died. But societal collapse?
The shutdown lasted for far too long. Mock Florida all you want, but they weathered the pandemic far better than many states with strict lockdown regimes (California/New York). Consider Florida has one of (if not the) largest senior populations in the US too.
Why do you assume I am referring to the US? Maybe for you it's normal for there to be looting and rampant crime in the face of crisis or emergency scenarios but I don't think that speaks for the rest of the world.
> Many countries do not have the health infrastructure the US has and have not undergone societal collapse.
What does this mean? We have universal healthcare and in my city emergency services are so overwhelmed and overworked the wait time for the past day is over an hour. You could probably rob a storefront in open daylight and get away with it right now.
The US is the highly developed country poster child for fucking up handling Covid. Other countries don't need whatever impressive health infrastructure you're alluding to because they responded better in the first place.
Finally, I don't have a horse in this race besides not letting people die, but I'd like to point out that Florida current situation looks like hot garbage to me. You couldn't pay me to go there right now.
> We have universal healthcare and in my city emergency services are so overwhelmed and overworked the wait time for the past day is over an hour.
That tells more about your healthcare system than about anything else. My city had virtually no lockdowns (but 2 weeks at the beginning until the measure became really unpopular), nobody ever cared about distancing or masking, the vaccination rates are low as hell, schools and businesses work as usual and yet here we are safe and sound. No societal collapse you promise, no mass extinction, nothing. Some people in their 80s died which is a tragedy since that had never happened before (aren't people supposed to live forever). But other than that, life as usual. What are we doing wrong?
Locations with low level of travel had less severe infections. For example countries in Eastern Europe got the wave later and it was smaller compared to Italy, UK, etc.
That doesn't explain it. Add in the other states with similar percent elderly populations to Florida and Florida still has a far worse delta wave than they do. And its not vaccination status because Florida has good vaccination rates among the older people.
You could also look at per county data to compare counties in Florida with counties with similar demographics in other states, or dive into the breakdowns that states give by age group.
Do all that and it will become clear that Florida's terrible delta wave outcome is because the state government largely stopped taking COVID preventative measures, and actively tried to stop local governments and businesses from doing so.
The shutdown lasted for far too long. Mock Florida all you want, but they weathered the pandemic far better than many states with strict lockdown regimes (California/New York). Consider Florida has one of (if not the) largest senior populations in the US too.