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Notes -
Just from my own perspective, I don’t think the problem was the initial reaction. The problem was that there was no real thought into what was going to be the sustainable solution to the need to slow spread while still giving people freedom and not destroying the economy. There were no end dates or mitigation mechanisms, no advice on what kinds of activities were high or low spread, or what types of environments were conducive to spread. So they just locked everything up indefinitely just to be sure and lied about the dangers so that the people were too scared of Covid to make rational decisions.
And to me that damned the whole thing. Nobody will trust a system that cannot be honest or upfront about dangers and trade offs and how the economy could actually function when nobody can leave the house without government permission. It further gave no criteria or end dates to the emergency. 2 weeks to flatten the curve became 2 months, than nearly 6 months. Because of all of this, the government simply lost all credibility, not just in health (and being Frank, no matter how bad the next pandemic gets, lockdowns are off the table, and good luck with vaccines) but in almost everything else. If the government lied about this in a power grab, what else are they lying about. (I personally think at least some of the popularity of Qanon and later election denial is down to the loss of trust that came out of the lockdown experience. People felt abused and lied to by their own government, and as such, conspiracy theories telling them the government was lying about other things and using its power to manipulate them into things that benefit them). That trust is unlikely to come back for at least a generation and maybe longer than that.
When I argue with my coworkers and other pro-Lockdown types its all about how it was poorly defined, blew our load on an important public health intervention, failure of implementation and buy in etc etc.
When it's the anti-Lockdown types its almost always "bruh, you know COVID was real right?"
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