In my view, lockdowns again are, more than anything else, a societal and policy failure. A failure to do the marginal things on mask wearing, ventilation, avoiding large indoor gatherings, rapid testing, complying with contact tracing efforts, incentivising compliance etc.

A failure of policies that subsidised activities that brought together networks in indoor places w/o masks, refused to pay carers to live in care homes, ordered people back to the office when they didn’t need to, and sent kids back to a miserable university experience.

A failure to think through the dynamic nature, mistaking short term trade offs for long term (EOTHO to help restaurants but which has contributed to the lockdown that will now close restaurants). The hubris to think regulations could be fine tuned to control a complex economy and

a complex network of human activity to keep R at 1, and a failure to provide clear, robust guidance on risks rather than absurdly prescriptive rules, many of which don’t make any sense on the margin for helping reduce transmission of the disease.

As a result of all that, we are now back to the situation where there are now no good options. An utter and miserable failure, for which governments can take substantial blame, but also for which populations and their behaviours—just denying a pandemic is happening—should too.