Many of the protocols mandated had minor or no impact on the spread of the disease, but inflicted horrendous pain and suffering on people. Policies that locked down nursing homes, for example, preventing family from attending to their loved ones in their last moments of life, or allowing nurses to attend covid positive patients and the vulnerable uninfected simultaneously, and many other practices by the dodgier health care facilities made the lockdowns a nasty and dehumanizing exercise of power with no basis in rationality. Shutting down small businesses, allowing oil companies to take in obscene profits and increasing their subsidies because you can sell a "people are driving less" narrative, and toying with a ludicrously dangerous profit incentive for public health by making the vaccines legal without liability or recourse for injury. It turned out relatively OK, but almost everything done in the name of public health had ulterior motives behind it, or a mad scramble to cover up incompetence or graft.

There are lots of lessons to be learned.