[6502nerdface]

> A seldom expressed idea is that maybe we acted close to optimally throughout this whole thing.

He doesn't go so far as to say "optimal," but Janan Ganesh recently made a similar point in the Financial Times:

https://on.ft.com/45SVbyD

Health policy aside, we clearly stimulated too much, but if you look at what the administration and lawmakers were saying back then they said things like "we'd rather err on the side of too much stimulus rather than too little," a sentiment that I think most people agreed with at the time, and, well, that's what we got.