[giantg2]

"The amount of pushback these measures got, when we were literally just trying to save lives"

Did it actually significsntly save lives or prevent long covid? I'm wondering if any countries didn't shut schools that we could compare to?

I would guess maybe in the initial wave by not overwhelming hospitals it would save a few lives. But when the policies were continually extended thier return on investment dropped as the harms they inflicted increased and the value they provided decreased. Perhaps a better approach would have been to tell the at-risk populations about the risks and mitigations to let them decide what level of protection they wanted for themselves (not talking about others since the whole masking thing turned out to be effectively useless without at least N95s).

My main point is that I know we could save tons of lives by banning cars (not just traffic fatalies but forcing people to walk could prevent many chronic issues), but that doesn't mean the cost/benefit is justified by ignoring the downsides, forcing large opposing population segments into it, and merely stating it was to save lives.

[frenchyatwork]

It's worth bearing in mind that the people making these policy decisions in 2020 were doing so without any objective knowledge of how the pandemic would actually end up playing out.

Car safety is somewhat different. While the harms of a car-dependent society are subjectively hard to come to terms with, especially for those who have grown accustom to it, it's a lot easier to objectively measure and predict.

[giantg2]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Even in 2020, they knew that the fatality rate was very low for most of the population and was only an issue for the elderly and those with specific comorbidities. Many of the secondary and n-ary effects of either the pandemic or eliminating cars are unknown until they actually play out. There may be some projections, but those projections tend to change. For example, maybe electric scooter become a huge problem because people refuse to walk after cars are banned (negating the potential exercise related benefits).