+1 to __blockcipher__ 's points. Maybe in the beginning draconian measures might have been justified, but current panic over cases (casedemic) and continuing moral panic and lockdowns are not.
BTW, since there's not a good place to make this point, I wish more people understood that IFR is not this fixed thing. As a contrived example, if you get medical advancements that lead to half your population living to 200 years old, even the most pathetic common cold virus would appear to have a crazy high IFR.
I live in California, and every year our misguided leaders let wood and dry brush stack up like crazy. Every year wildfires erupt and every year we artificially suppress them. The result is there's a huge pile of fuel just waiting to go up.
Similarly, when you have a minor flu season for a couple years, you get a large population of elderly people that build up and are capable of being taken out by a pathogen like SARS-2.
SARS-2 already, even with the inflated death toll, is weak enough overall that we'd have barely noticed it (in our day-to-day lives) if we'd never knew it existed. But go back a few centuries to when it was rare to have people live past 60, and it would literally be an unnoticeable virus.
+1 to __blockcipher__ 's points. Maybe in the beginning draconian measures might have been justified, but current panic over cases (casedemic) and continuing moral panic and lockdowns are not.