This goes back to my original point. Policies have to also account for geopolitical tensions.
You're at the beginning of a Pandemic, China just released the genetic material for the virus. You're hoping they collaborate with you to exchange more info about it and help fight it off. You're hoping not to hurt our trade with them, and other such things.
It could be a lab leak, it could be a natural origin.
China says it's not a lab leak, do you come out gun blazing and accuse them of hiding things and that they're responsible for COVID?
Even though, it's not like you have proof it's a lab leak either.
Or do you focus more on mitigation, containment, developing a better understanding of the virus, finding ways to fight it off. And leave actually figuring out if it was a leak or not and if there are responsible parties to later?
I know your opinion is that you'd have accused China right then and there. And maybe it would have led to better outcomes, maybe not.
My point is that this whole consideration is not part of the normal scientific inquiry, but something that policy making has to contend with.
Now for masks, I mean they know they work when using real PPEs worn properly. There was a shortage. Again, it's a policy thing. Your medical staff needs PPEs, not even just for COVID, they need them for other pre-covid diseases too.
Later, it was maybe a toss up. Individually it works, but collectively it's unclear, because it also encourages more social proximity, and how many people will wear crappy masks or wear them badly, take them off when they talk, etc.
With Ivermectin, initially, you'd get things like this:
> An adult drank an injectable ivermectin formulation intended for use in cattle in an attempt to prevent COVID-19 infection. This patient presented to a hospital with confusion, drowsiness, visual hallucinations, tachypnea, and tremors. The patient recovered after being hospitalized for nine days.
Again, from a policy point of view. When you see things like that. You might think. Ok, hold on. It's not currently approved for COVID, we're still figuring out if it works. Then we're still working the guidance for when to prescribe it for COVID, how much to use, etc. In the meantime, we don't want more of these kind of situations where people think it's a miracle cure, so maybe let's tone down the hopes around it.
I don't know if Lockdown is a failure either. With policy, again, you have to compare against alternatives, not like the outcome. Could there have been better policies that would have had better outcomes. A end COVID with zero death Policy most likely didn't exist. It clearly slowed down the spread, which gave the medical system breathing room. It clearly did something for me, since I didn't get sick at all during that time, not even a cold. Did it make everyone depressed, affected the economy, it did as well. I don't feel it's really clear if not having them would have been overall better or worse. You can have an opinion, but I doubt you have clear evidence one way or another.
Let me end with, there also likely has been some corruption, some self interest, and what not. And I think we should continue with investigations, like how Biden opened up a bunch of investigation into figuring out the origin of COVID. And we should have retrospectives on the effectiveness of the policies chosen so we're able to make better policies next time and be better prepared. It does seem there was maybe some overreach in some instances on what was being censored, maybe too broad strokes were taken.
I agree with all that. But had I been in charge of the policies, I'd have had to contend with all these considerations and also am not sure what I would have done better.