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You are misremembering. The “irrational over-response” came once we realized just how incredibly contagious the disease was, since it ran the risk of completely overwhelming hospitals and causing a collapse of health care systems. (And came very close in some places such as Italy.)

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I disagree. I looked up dates to verify. I suppose if you got your information from mainstream media it would seem like it went as you say. But it is a fact that the spread started in December 2019 [1], and the Diamond Princess data was available in February [2], and lockdowns started in March [3]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_on_Diamond_P...

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lockdowns

I don't see how this contradicts what I said. Serious lockdowns started in response to hospitals getting swamped, too late to actually stop the virus but just in time to barely keep health care afloat. As such, I fail to see how you could call such a response "irrational" unless you've memory-holed the corpse trucks, treatment tents, and so on.

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