Disagree on herd immunity- that smacks of fatalism, and that's not what we do in America.
We have the benefit of hindsight, but these lock downs were an opportunity to invest/upgrade HVAC systems across the country. And basically a missed one at that. We also dithered around and left a lot of "scaling" opportunities on the table mostly because the admin at the time refused to acknowledge the severity of the disease. Instead of using DPA to produce millions of masks/rapid tests, we built ventilators and sent them to countries that didn't ask for them.
That total lack of competence from the Trump administration led to the rise of zeroism as a health policy. Tbh, it's not much better. We don't use that for driving or any other policy, tbh. We set a goal of zero and add layers of safety to mitigate risk. The advocates of zeroism usually have the luxury of choice. It's easy to call for lock downs and closed schools if you work from home and can afford a tutor and Instacart. Not so much if you're working at an Amazon warehouse....or in aviation...
