With the benefit of hindsight, it’s really hard to argue that lockdowns were the right call.
> With the benefit of hindsight, it’s really hard to argue that lockdowns were the right call.
With the benefit of hindsight, the easier judgment to make is that the US has become an anti-social, low-trust society made up of people who are incapable of putting the needs of others ahead of their own interests. If you live in the US, you were never truly under "lockdown".
We also have plenty of evidence from the Spanish Flu pandemic which supports pre-emptive school closures (rather than reactive school closures) as an effective means of slowing spread
The US's categorical inability to implement the basic functions of a state are not an indictment of those functions
> mostly ineffective
The United States government is mostly ineffective. Again, America's inability to do most functions of government correctly is not an indictment of those functions.
Also, it should be said, the US's prolonged mishandling of the Coronavirus pandemic had lasting economic impacts because people willingly chose to stay home to avoid getting sick, not just because occupancy limits were lowered for many businesses (what you mistakenly call a "lockdown"). Had the US enforced coronavirus restrictions better and if Americans didn't selfishly refuse to follow the rules, the economy would have taken far less damage than we chose to inflict upon ourselves.
We have known this for over 100 years, since the Spanish flu pandemic. Denying this is simply anti-scientific and motivated by your political beliefs