> Actually, this seems to be the dirty secret of pandemic planning - as far as I can tell, there really doesn't seem to be a good way to evaluate how effective

> Actually, this seems to be the dirty secret of pandemic planning - as far as I can tell, there really doesn't seem to be a good way to evaluate how effective specific policies are. Before an actual pandemic, that may be somewhat true. although some measures are blatantly counterproductive, e.g https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/13/boris-johnson-scrapped-cabinet-pandemic-committee-six-months/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/06/13/boris-johnso... An actual disaster though, is a "can't fake it" test of disaster preparedness. So you agree with what I said here prior evaluations were overtaken by events? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27290252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27290252