IMHO, the earliest shutdowns were defensible on the basis of ignorance: we knew so little about the communicability and lethality of SARS-CoV-2. It would have

IMHO, the earliest shutdowns were defensible on the basis of ignorance: we knew so little about the communicability and lethality of SARS-CoV-2. It would have been irresponsible to risk chicken with something that might have had MERS lethality. Eventually we put tighter bounds on those quantities, and could make more informed decisions. But yes, all stages of the pandemic were unfortunately people talking past each other, without being actually curious about the pros/cons of various approaches. But it's been awhile since the political class has had to deal with an actual existential science problem... so that muscle wasn't very strong.