This bothered me during those discussions everyone who pointed out the potential impacts to the economy were shouted down for "caring more about money and people" and "putting the rich ahead of grandma" like the economy was some nebulous abstract betting ring that only effected the powerful and wealthy.
No one seemed to understand that those kinds of things were going to have much more drastic effects for everyday people as well. This same thing goes for the stock market, sure I don't have a ton of money it it, but I do keep putting money in my 401k and so do a lot of other people that are depending on it for their retirement, when the stock market takes hits it effects me just as much as the "elite".
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.
No one seemed to understand that those kinds of things were going to have much more drastic effects for everyday people as well. This same thing goes for the stock market, sure I don't have a ton of money it it, but I do keep putting money in my 401k and so do a lot of other people that are depending on it for their retirement, when the stock market takes hits it effects me just as much as the "elite".