Now if we can apply some of the same principles to other viral respiratory infections, we’ll really gain something.

I’ve heard “Prevent the flu by washing your hands”, but seems like a statement heavily rooted in victim blaming. Like coronavirus, influenza is an enveloped virus, which doesn’t “survive” very long outside of hosts and airborne transmission has been downplayed.

And it’s been long known that a substantial amount of influenza infections are asymptomatic, or present only with the symptom level of a cold. “How do you know you have the flu and not a cold? You’ll know!” is not true.

> One in three influenza-infected individuals is asymptomatic

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2646474/

> Anthony Fauci has never struggled to speak his mind. But now that he has left government, he is finally speaking at least some of the truth about government policies and Covid. For instance, the six-feet rule for social distancing “sort of just appeared” without a solid scientific basis. That’s one of the admissions that Members of Congress say the former National Institutes of Health potentate made this week in two days of closed-door testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

> It’s not news that the six-feet rule lacked scientific rhyme or reason. A BMJ article in August 2020 explained as much. It noted that the virus’s transmissibility depends on many factors, including ventilation, the host’s viral load and symptoms, and the duration of exposure, among other things.

> Officials nonetheless promoted the arbitrary rule because they didn’t trust Americans to understand scientific nuance or, for that matter, anything. Businesses, churches and schools that weren’t forced to close had to spend money reconfiguring their operations to comply with these government guidelines.

https://archive.is/2vwWT

There were silver linings to COVID. One was the rise of remote and hybrid working arrangements across a much wider swatch of the economy. Another is the ruined reputation of "experts", who used "Trust the Science" as carte blanche to enact all manner of unscientific and destructive policies.

The government's censorship of social media platforms, the lockdowns, middling bureaucrats becoming petty tyrants... None of this will happen again, because society will be much more skeptical of so-called "experts".