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Notes -
We knew very early from cases like the Diamond Princess what we were likely looking at. Possibly you could argue it was until May 2020, when we had CFR data out of New York that showed kids how severe the age stratification of impact was.
In addition, there was functionally speaking zero support for the kind of lockdowns we saw in Medical Literature. The famous pandemic influenza response paper (written by Donald Henderson - who led parts of the smallpox eradication effort) mentioned how important it was to try to keep life functioning as normally as possible. I still don't understand where the policy came from - it seems like we saw China do it, saw a bunch of people die in NY due to doctors over-ventilating (I think that was a well-intentioned mistake) and Cuomo shoving people back into Nursing homes (honestly, might also have been a well-intentioned mistake), and everybody panicked.
Less charitably, bureaucrats got high on their own supply of people listening to them/convinced themselves they could stop all disease spread (Fauci quite obviously embraced his narcissistic side).
I personally remember my first visit to a new PCP post COVID. Within 10 minutes he was recommending I get a COVID booster, he did not ask if I'd had COVID recently, how my reaction to previous shots had been (heavy acute symptoms after my 2nd shot), or whether the elevated risk as a young male was worth it, it was just "here's the recommendation I will now parrot to you unthinkingly".
I have not been back.
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