[Archipelagia]

I think the entire idea behind safety is to start worrying before it becomes critical.

Similarly with Covid, the right time to start worrying (on a societal level) was before the disease becomes widespread. The tragedy of that means that if you take the correct action at the right time and succeed, you will always look like you were overreacting.

[LawTalkingGuy]

The proper solution is to have a plan (with contingencies, etc) and follow the plan. Otherwise the solution is guaranteed to be political and thus stupid.

Politicians are going to be worried about perception of the appropriateness of their actions, not the correctness of those actions.