Let's not make the same mistake of overconfidence on the return journey as we did on the way out.

From NPR: “Mounting Evidence” Suggests COVID Not As Deadly as Thought. Did the Experts Fail Again? by Jon Miltimore.

I have been a critic from the beginning that our response to Covid-19 has been ill-considered. At the time of its emergence, Covid-19 was new and unknown. We were facing something about which we had little useful or specific knowledge. What we knew was basically analogous knowledge. "If it behaves like X did, then we can expect . . . ". "If it behaves like Y did, then we can expect . . . ".

The problem was not that we did not know. It was that we treated assumptions and opinions as settled knowledge simply because they came from assumed authorities such as CDC or WHO or from assumed experts. But as I have argued, experts are only expert in their narrow field. No one can be expert across multiple loosely coupled, dynamic, evolving complex systems such as in a pandemic.

All we can do is identify the best and most knowledgeable people (the experts), get them with the most experienced people (the professionals), take a consciously humble approach of balancing probabilities and consequence, few of which are understood with clarity.

We potentially now, as in the FEE article, could make the same mistake in reverse.

As we begin to get clarity, still partial and emerging, it does appear that we overreacted in terms of lockdowns. With an unknown system where you are guessing, that is not unexpected. When you have to make decisions based on best-guesses, some of those guesses will have turned out to be wrong. And we should not get all tangled up in second-guessing.

It appears to me, on a balance of guesses and mixed evidence, the the virus is not near as fatal as feared, largely confined to the elderly or otherwise co-morbid, and substantially asympotmatic among younger cohorts.

The arguments remain bitter but the all causes death comparisons seem reasonably compelling. Personal hygiene, masks, social distancing, avoiding prolonged exposure in confined spaces, and closely guarding the elderly and otherwise co-morbid. Those are the things that seemed to work. Lock-downs? Made no difference.

Lockdowns were logical but at a high economic cost and little or no net death benefit.

Of course, there is an immense amount of commercial and reputational and political benefit to denying this but that seems to be where the evidence is pointing.

We'll see. The important thing to remember is that while some forecasters will turn out to have been right back in February and March when many of these decisions were being made, there was no way at that time for them to prove it with robust data. They made have believed in their forecast with as great certitude as those who were wrong. but none of them could prove anything.

All we can legitimately do is distinguish those who were careful and balanced in their judgments from those who were rabid in their convictions. Oh, and it remains reasonable to condemn and hold accountable those who made decisions which were seen as provably stupid even then. Such as moving the infected into close proximity to the elderly and infirm. It was known to be a lethal decision and that counsel was ignored.