> The sad thing is that none of this was inevitable.
I'd like to push back on your framing of this.
Whether you think everything was "hysteria" or not, whether you think the measures taken in the wake of Covid were net-good or not...
Either way you look at it, the ground truth is that there was a pandemic, which would inflict some amount of damage no matter what. You might think that a less "hysterical" approach would've caused less overall damage, but damage would've been done either way.
When a tornado strikes a city (for example), the government response can be better or worse, but at its base, it's an act of nature that causes some amount of damage no matter what.
I'd like to push back on your framing of this.
Whether you think everything was "hysteria" or not, whether you think the measures taken in the wake of Covid were net-good or not...
Either way you look at it, the ground truth is that there was a pandemic, which would inflict some amount of damage no matter what. You might think that a less "hysterical" approach would've caused less overall damage, but damage would've been done either way.
When a tornado strikes a city (for example), the government response can be better or worse, but at its base, it's an act of nature that causes some amount of damage no matter what.