Conversely, arresting people going paddleboarding and filling skate parks with sand was a totally sane reaction. Good thing we didn't overreact to Covid and completely fuck up the economy and the education progress of millions of children.

Your "domain experts" are often chronically incorrect sociopaths.

Let's not even get into the categorical and coordinated censorship campaign.

Shocking that people even support the covid response that happened. Much less make light through smarmy sarcastic shitposting.

I'm a libertarian, but you've got to be honest with yourself about how much nuance you can actually expect from bureaucrats. If we didn't have a large contingent of social-media fueled rebellion against the idea of any sort of restrictions, there would have been more regulatory bandwidth to spend making exceptions for privately-owned outdoor establishments like skateparks and paddleboarding (which included the need to figure out things like equipment rental/cleaning protocols).

Note that only half of US states had any kind of "lockdown" (ie stay at home order with the force of law), and they were predominantly red states. I'd say that bigger crowd control problems caused larger overreactions. The state I was in merely had a firmly worded suggestion to stay home. I'd call that the sweet spot.

It's incredibly dumb to judge, with hindsight, the calls that were being made with the best data and intent at the time.

Next pandemic, come back from 5 years later with your time machine, and let us know what to do, mmmkay?