[dredmorbius]

Medicine is literally the source of the concept of side effects, the idea that some helpful interventions have simultaneous harmful impacts.

For large-scale infectious disease --- epidemiology and public health --- quarantine and infection/contact tracing are very tried and true containment methods. Yes, these impose costs, particularly on individual liberties. What's key is having a well-governed, principled, high-integrity, trustworthy government which makes clearly-justified decisions as to when to impose such restrictions, and when to lift them. Sadly, this has become more difficult in recent years.

[mannanj]

Agreed. The theory is there, and even then sounds like it would work like you said if the government was "well-governed, principled, high-integrity, trustworthy". Theory rarely works according to the plan in practice, so as we see today, even if those qualities had been a priority of the government (which I don't think they really are - I think the government in USA acts more like a rich-man's proxy tricking you a lot) we need the plan that accounts for some rough spots or edge cases.