The costs for these closures have been high in terms of economic pain. In addition, the protests, though they are justified due to the oppression the community has experienced, are likely undoing a lot of the effects of social distancing by putting a lot of people together in close proximity for hours.
So in the end, we will have experienced a lot of economic pain for not that much benefit.
> The costs for these closures have been high in terms of economic pain.
It's not as if the choice is have a lock down and reduce deaths but ruin your economy vs don't have a lock down and have a lot of death with a good economy. Having a lot of death will ruin your economy too.
Also, I'm sure coronavirus is now a high priority for science to master.
https://coronavirus-dashboard.utah.gov/#incidence-epicurve
https://senate.utah.gov/majority-newsroom/2020/6/2/public-he...
This is very US-centric. Our lockdown was more or less completely useless, it wasn't enforced and case numbers continue to rise while in much of Europe they appear to have worked exactly as intended.
Also, if a government doesn’t attempt a closure, and things run out of hand, the population may start a chaotic closure.
I may be too pessimistic, but looking at the political climate in the USA, I think that could take the form of neighborhoods attempting to close off other neighborhoods to ward of the (perceived or real) threat of an epidemic spreading. The result could be a lot worse than what we see now.
We've had several months of social distancing, which bought us a lot of time to ramp up healthcare and medical supply manufacturing capacity.