[bshipp]

I understood the justification and necessity for lockdowns but not only were they too late but they were also infested with political exemptions and even if they had helped they were only ever a temporary solution.

Full lockdowns certainly wouldn't have been allowed to last long enough for the vaccine to be produced, especially if that research, development and production had taken as long as it was initially expected to take.

The western covid public health response was a bit of a disorganized mess, but even there it ended up being remarkably effective. I was amazed that we had almost two years with virtually zero flu infections, which showed the vast difference between the infectiousness of normal influenza and covid. Unfortunately, covid was such a stubbornly infectious little bugger that it only slowed the progression.