[fighterpilot]

Look, I'm not trying to argue that lockdowns were a bad idea or what have you. Just that they were the easiest cognitively for non-technical politicians.

The hard, longer-term work of building out local vaccine manufacturing and distribution wasn't done because it required way more foresight, executive planning ability and basic scientific/medical knowledge.

The other contributing factor is that politicians don't want to be embarrassed if they create some expensive manufacturing facility which ends up being unused. Better to just not make it at all and you'll be safe - after all, that's what everyone else did.

Lack of spending on science research is one thing, but couldn't they have at least imported a little talent to create redundant vaccine manufacturing facilities to deal with just this one acute crisis? It seems like the only person thinking about that was Bill Gates? Why can't our elected leaders show the same leadership? The only country that I'd expect to have this kind of technocratic vision and execution would be China.

[rvieira]

Lockdowns _did_ have a non-technical interpretation. The main purpose was to avoid everyone getting sick at the same time so that hospitals wouldn't run out of beds.

I think the main problem with politicians was that they hesitated because they wanted to have two contradictory things: lockdowns to slow down the pandemic (until vaccines were ready) and keeping the economy going "as normal". IMO you can't square that circle.