Are lockdowns justified?

[arewethereyet]

Yer an idiot.  Why don't you concern yourself with your country?

Well, the public opinion about lockdowns and masks in Croatia has changed drastically since the beginning of the pandemic. And at least some experts have changed their opinion as well, in the same direction.
At the beginning of the pandemic, people who were against masks and lockdowns were ridiculed. Mainstream media was full of explanations of how masks and lockdowns can work, and how this all will end when we get an effective vaccine in a few months, and how economy will bloom after it all ends. Anti-lockdown mentality was associated with far left (not far right, as in the USA), because our left-wing president Zoran Milanović has always been against them. He said in September, for example, that If they are protesting against masks, that's okay.. And he said a few times that Croatia is, thanks to the COVID policies, becoming more and more like North Korea (that those policies being effective is sjevernokorejska istina, North Korean truth, that is "propaganda people are forced to believe").
These days, the anti-lockdown and anti-mask mentality is prevalent in the mainstream media. Gordan Lauc, for instance, claimed back in October that masks help very little, and that "repression is not the solution", and claimed, in November: Some think that Croatia should have stricter measures, but from the examples of countries such as Argentina or Peru, and some cities in Europe, we can see that the imposed measures don't actually achieve the desired effect.. And that mentality has only gotten more and more mainstream over time. The new law that requires masks to be worn outside was ridiculed by the mainstream media, even before it was nullified for being anti-constitutional.
So is the mentality that vaccines need to be tested more, but I am quite sure that is misguided. I think the side effects of vaccines are vastly exaggerated, just like the symptoms of COVID. If you read about the side-effects of COVID vaccination on the Internet, you will probably get the impression that you will likely feel horrible after receiving the vaccine, and that there is a high chance you will get blood clots (even though there is no scientific explanation for how COVID could give you blood clots, yet alone how a COVID vaccine might give you). But actual studies that control for the placebo effect find no such side effects. Similar to statins: it is a common knowledge that statins cause myalgia, except that studies that control for placebo mostly find no effect. The real question is whether it is reasonable to expect the vaccines will end the pandemic. There is huge uncertainty is how effective the vaccines are against COVID. Like CDC says: Vaccine effectiveness of full immunization with two doses of mRNA vaccines was 90% (95% CI = 68%–97%) against RT-PCR–confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection.. For all we know, mRNA vaccines could be only 68% effective. While that is certainly better than masks, it is hard to imagine that will stop the pandemic.

You fail to grasp that there isn't a one stop fix for getting past this pandemic.  It's the combination of social distancing (which will at times require lockdowns), wearing a proper mask properly, handwashing, and vaccines. 

If wearing a mask makes you feel repressed I would suggest foregoing all safety precautions and let natural selection run its course.  

Don't wear a seat belt.  Cross the road without paying attention to traffic.  Eat undercooked or badly handled and stored food.  Get out there and live freely.  Odds are it'll probably be a short life.  Just try not to endanger anyone else.