In hindsight, were the extreme lockdowns justified?

I’ve skipped over a week of writing on Medium because I’ve been writing elsewhere. I had an idea of channeling my passion for running into a full-blown book. I started just days ago, and it totally consumed me. Twenty thousand words done, and I feel good so far.

As I was writing, I was reminiscing on my running journey. It spans decades, but the most significant transformation happened in the initial months of the “pandemic” year. I started to run a lot more, added variety to my routine, and eventually, running became my life’s most unbreakable habit. My wife helped keep our family active — we often went out for hikes and runs. My kids play tennis, and when even tennis courts got shot down, she made them do all kinds of routines on the grass field near our home. They couldn’t touch their devices till everything was done. Check out this whiteboard from the spring of 2022. Glad I took a picture of it. Four columns correspond to our four kids.

Thinking about that year, I couldn’t help recalling the extreme lockdowns.

We drove to a beach in Southern California — it was sealed off.

We drove to local hills to hike, and the trail was sealed off. We went anyway, as did many other people who were not discouraged by the yellow tape at the start of the trail. We later got parking tickets because we ignored the signs that tried to prevent parking.

Damn tennis courts got shut down in Irvine! You don’t need to socially distance in tennis — your opponent is on the other end of the court. Sure, you can still come close to each other if you interact, but we were all careful then. It was expected that public courts got closed. However, we were hoping that the couple of courts in our community would stay open. Eventually, the head of the board or whatever governing body of our community put a lock on the courts. When I asked him what could trigger the reopening, he said, “When they have a vaccine.” At that time, there were no signs, no certainty of any vaccine. I was stunned by this very conservative approach. Or maybe I shouldn’t have been — he was pretty old, and we were in California which was especially forceful with lockdown and mask mandates. It was ironic, however, that when I called him in May to check if there was a possibility of re-opening, he said he was vacationing in Hawaii. He could afford an escape from the walls of his home. We wanted that escape too. We didn’t need a vacation. We just wanted our kids to go back to some of their activities.

Restaurants, recreational places, gyms, prolonged school closures — I don’t need to go through the whole list. It was an unforgettable era that most people will never forget.

I understand the initial extremality of the lockdowns. The virus was a huge problem, but the uncertainty was also a factor — no one knew how much worse it could get and what the long-term consequences would be for those who got infected. We were living in a post-apocalyptic world reminiscent of zombie movies.

However, now that we have the benefit of hindsight, how do we look back at that period? Were the lockdowns excessive? I don’t mean to complain or rant. It was a difficult period for everyone. I think it was especially challenging — both mentally and physically — for kids deprived of activities and a structured environment. So were they excessive?