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> our ancestors sailed across the oceans into the unknown

Some of our ancestors were almost completely wiped out from novel disease brought by those that crossed the oceans. They were probably also terrified.

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No, it isn’t comparable, because those diseases wiped out 3/4 of the population. That obviously isn’t the case with COVID, even if our terrified-of-everything populace thinks it is.

Have you considered that we took a lot of precautions that made it possible that as relatively few people died as did? Even with shutdowns, lockdowns, and extreme measures in healthcare, we lost about 0.2% of the population. If we had done nothing, we might have reached 1%. If a group was going door to door randomly killing 1 in every 100 people in your neighborhood, would you consider it reasonable to stop answering the door for a while until they left?

How does that have anything to do with the parent comment?

have you considered that if all we’d done was immediate quarantine the aged and infirm (with generously compensated volunteer caretakers), recommend indoor distancing, and perhaps recommend masks in homes, we’d likely be at a similar and possibly lower level, that all the “measures” were not about reducing spread but rather prolonging the time that the mediopolitical machine had to take advantage of the fear and uncertainty they continually manufacture?

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