[amluto]

> And if they had been right that it would vanish all by itself, like a flu season

This always seemed rather optimistic. Flu rates are seasonal, and COVID could have been seasonal. But pandemic flus and particularly nasty flu strains also fade away because enough people either get them or get vaccinated that they are usually no longer so significant the following year. COVID lockdowns largely prevented this.

If the vaccines had worked anywhere near as well as an optimistic interpretation of the trials suggested, the lockdowns would probably have looked better in hindsight.

(Which isn’t to say that lockdowns didn’t have some value. If nothing else, they bought time for the vaccines to roll out and they may have contributed to a lot of people getting Omicron instead of earlier strains. It seems like Omicron was a decent amount less nasty.)