[mschuster91]

Uh, there was and is no "hindsight" involved here. The scientific consensus about coronavirus and how to fight it (wearing masks, lockdowns and contact tracing) was clear pretty shortly after the whole drama began.

The problem was politicians, not just in the US, didn't have the guts to tell and explain their citizens that. The governments that did (New Zealand) or had prior epidemics experience / a population with a high compliance rate/trust in government (Japan, Taiwan) fared pretty well, as did the governments that resorted to authoritarian scale (China, Vietnam, Thailand).

For what it's worth even European countries such as Italy showed that hard lockdowns were and are effective, but politicians chose to disregard that evidence and prayed for the second wave to never appear...

[Nomentatus]

Right. The mask data goes back a century and very good studies were published re SARS and masks after mask data was discarded and ignored by many during that illness. Quarantines and social distancing aren't new, never were.

[mam2]

the hindsight is not about what we should "ideally do to fight the pandemic regardless of everything else". But if people really wanted it (for economic reason for start, you know poor people like being able to eat)...