This comment is a great example of why it is so hard to fight pandemics. It is incredibly tempting to give in to the post-hoc rationalization of how things worked out. Which then leads to a high degree of public complacency prior to the next pandemic.

On an individual basis, people who survive the pandemic (by avoiding infection or by surviving infection) are tempted to reason that the fear, doubt, and mitigations were all in fact overblown. After all, most folks got through it ok, right?

The reality is that COVID worked out way, way worse than even pessimistic guesses in early 2020. It killed over a million Americans, many of whom were in fact healthy adults without obvious risk factors. And the long-term legacy of “long COVID” impairment is still being learned.