If you don't order a lockdown and it was needed then lots of people die, this is very bad.
If you do order a lockdown and it wasn't needed then you can say that you were just being safe. And it's hard to even tell when a lockdown wasn't needed because the very act of doing it changes the result and leads to less cases. The lockdown was successful!
It's always easy to say "We did it to save lives" and few people will hold you to account for it.
Such a one sided view. Let me tell you the truth of the matter.
Government is made out of multitudes of personalities and conflicting interests. There are those that care, there are those that don't care, there are scientists, there are people who are knowledgeable of the proper action and there are those who are emotional and everything in between exists as well.
It is a hodge podge of motives. Classifying government action in a singular light as if it was one ulterior ass covering agenda is a lie people tell themselves when they need something to blame.
I don't understand how what you are saying refutes ass-covering at all. Yes, you have a pile of people in government with all sorts of opinions, but ultimately there is someone who has to make the decision.
If you present that person with a cloud of information from a bunch of different conflicting sources it actually incentivises ass-covering even more.
You say "ulterior ass covering agenda" but an Agenda is entirely the opposite of what an ass-coverer has.
When you don't know what you should do, you pick safe option that nobody is going to blame you for.
I didn't refute anything just like the original statement didn't prove anything. To do this you require evidence. Neither of us offered anything concrete so we are in a discussion where we only offer opinions.
Additionally my statement itself doesn't refute ass covering. All I am saying is that the government is too complex to classify it as a singular entity out to cover it's own ass.
Several things cause me to disagree with you. Some of the most best science is being done by people who are part of or have high influence in the government. There are definitely people up there who view the problem as a situation that needs to be resolved rather then an every man for himself type of deal you seem to characterize it as.
As I said, the government is a hodge podge of both. This has both benefits and downsides.
An example of a government that tries to act as a singular entity is China. In terms of stopping covid in its' tracks China done better than the hodge podge government that makes up US democracy. However, in terms of stopping covid from spreading out of Wuhan, Chinas' ass covering is what screwed up the world. There's good and bad to either methodology and It's too complicated to characterize.
Ya, to me, ass covering is much more like trying to rewrite history after the fact, downplaying the virus, or maybe trying to hide statistics like nursing home deaths in your state.
If you don't order a lockdown and it was needed then lots of people die, this is very bad.
If you do order a lockdown and it wasn't needed then you can say that you were just being safe. And it's hard to even tell when a lockdown wasn't needed because the very act of doing it changes the result and leads to less cases. The lockdown was successful!
It's always easy to say "We did it to save lives" and few people will hold you to account for it.