"At the start of the pandemic we didn’t know enough about the virus to know what was and was not necessary."
We did actually. Many things were known and anti-lockdown activists were pointing these things out from the start. In hindsight they were all right and the "experts" were wrong.
Things these people were pointing out right back in March/April 2020:
1. SARS-CoV-2 is a respiratory coronavirus. We have lots of experience with those: they're normally mild, seasonal and spread quickly. All these things have turned out to be true (yes COVID is a mild disease compared with most others).
2. The Diamond Princess cruise ship had an outbreak at the start of February 2020. This immediately made it clear that (a) IFR was low even amongst very elderly people and (b) many people didn't catch it at all, even when quarantined on a plague ship.
3. Modelling was ignoring all the above by assuming a way higher IFR than the Diamond Princess data supported, that the virus was entirely non-seasonal, and that the entire population would get infected in a single massive wave. None of these assumptions were supported by evidence and virtually no epidemiologists cared when this was pointed out. In fact the opposite, they went on the attack.
4. The WHO actually had a plan for pandemic respiratory viruses. It said very clearly not to do lockdowns, close borders or do contact tracing. This plan was ignored.
We did actually. Many things were known and anti-lockdown activists were pointing these things out from the start. In hindsight they were all right and the "experts" were wrong.
Things these people were pointing out right back in March/April 2020:
1. SARS-CoV-2 is a respiratory coronavirus. We have lots of experience with those: they're normally mild, seasonal and spread quickly. All these things have turned out to be true (yes COVID is a mild disease compared with most others).
2. The Diamond Princess cruise ship had an outbreak at the start of February 2020. This immediately made it clear that (a) IFR was low even amongst very elderly people and (b) many people didn't catch it at all, even when quarantined on a plague ship.
3. Modelling was ignoring all the above by assuming a way higher IFR than the Diamond Princess data supported, that the virus was entirely non-seasonal, and that the entire population would get infected in a single massive wave. None of these assumptions were supported by evidence and virtually no epidemiologists cared when this was pointed out. In fact the opposite, they went on the attack.
4. The WHO actually had a plan for pandemic respiratory viruses. It said very clearly not to do lockdowns, close borders or do contact tracing. This plan was ignored.