In particular I am skeptical of the idea that all the preparations taken only cost in the billions of dollars range. And the idea that COVID itself (opposed to the government response to COVID, i.e. shutdowns) have cost trillions.
An early, severe, global reaction, like China, would have prevented COVID from becoming endemic. That would have cost BILLIONS of dollars, and impacted perhaps TENS OF THOUSANDS or even HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people in the US.
Instead, we've got a million dead in the US, many times that worldwide, and are continuing a giant dumpster-fire with trillions of dollars. Not to mention several times that with long COVID.
And we learned no lessons.
As a footnote, as much as the top-level post was wrong, it shouldn't have been flagged. I'm so tired of sites filtering everyone they disagree with.
$1 times (350 million) times (365) is $127.75 billion.