Originally Posted by samc

In the timeline/universe I inhabit, we exercised a lockdown to mitigate spread while simultaneously instituting various other social distancing measures. What we are seeing is now the result of those combined actions. A squirrel in my neighborhood died, and I stepped on a butterfly. I can’t prove it, but my hypothesis is that lockdown and social distancing were responsible for lowering R more than the squirrel’s sacrifice.

Avoiding the ad populum fallacy; I’ll add that the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Korea, Australia, the UAE and the USA all took pretty much the same measures. I’ve been in/out of all of them since January. So, might I suggest that when the majority of the world has reached the same conclusions, maybe the burden of argument lies with those that are saying the majority is wrong?

Or, if you’re just trying to point out that I drew a conclusion that: the numbers we’re seeing now are a result of our earlier actions and when we acted. Then yes, that is a conclusion.