It's too easy to predict what those post-mortems would look like.
The right will claim we destroyed businesses and created trillions in debt, and yet still millions died, so the monetary losses were pointless, and therefore we shouldn't shut everything down at the next pandemic.
The left will claim that the shut downs didn't go far enough, and so we still had millions dead, and therefore we need to shut down even harder and for longer to save lives.
I think trivially a pandemic response team might not be disbanded right before a pandemic. But I flew a lot in late 2019 / early 2020 and there were signs everywhere in terminals about did you recently fly to China? So clearly the threat was well known and communicated to "decision makers"; what would a pandemic team have done differently?
Moderna was in clinic trials in March [1] thats over a month before USA's Operation Warp Speed [2]. I'm not sure they could've sped up vaccine development that much.
I see a lot on the right still denying anyone died at all from covid. My friend still says lockdowns actually killed the people, despite some countries with lockdowns having no excess mortality at all.
Comments
It's too easy to predict what those post-mortems would look like.
The right will claim we destroyed businesses and created trillions in debt, and yet still millions died, so the monetary losses were pointless, and therefore we shouldn't shut everything down at the next pandemic.
The left will claim that the shut downs didn't go far enough, and so we still had millions dead, and therefore we need to shut down even harder and for longer to save lives.
I do wonder what could've been done better.
I think trivially a pandemic response team might not be disbanded right before a pandemic. But I flew a lot in late 2019 / early 2020 and there were signs everywhere in terminals about did you recently fly to China? So clearly the threat was well known and communicated to "decision makers"; what would a pandemic team have done differently?
Moderna was in clinic trials in March [1] thats over a month before USA's Operation Warp Speed [2]. I'm not sure they could've sped up vaccine development that much.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderna#COVID-19_vaccine
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed
I see a lot on the right still denying anyone died at all from covid. My friend still says lockdowns actually killed the people, despite some countries with lockdowns having no excess mortality at all.