States and people that listened to the public health establishment saved hundreds of thousands of lives: https://batten.virginia.edu/research/how-state-policies-impa...:

> If all states had imposed restrictions similar to those used in the 10 most restrictive states, excess deaths would have been an estimated 10% to 21% lower than the 1.18 million that actually occurred during the 2-year analysis period; conversely, the estimates suggest counterfactual increases of 13% to 17% if all states had restrictions similar to those in the 10 least-restrictive states. The estimated strong vs weak state restriction difference was 271 000 to 447 000 deaths, with behavior changes associated with 49% to 79% of the overall disparity.

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cavemandaveman an hour ago | parent [-]

Well then there's this meta-analysis (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11127-024-01216-7) that suggests that may not be the case. Honestly, you can find a paper to back up whatever you want to claim.

The paper you linked also doesn't take into account economic impacts, which aren't negligible, and lead to deaths of despair, drug abuse, unaffordable housing, etc.. They also admit the school closures were ineffective and unnecessary and we've seen the mental health and educational impacts on kids and now young adults that had those years taken from them.

Keep in mind also that the favorite phrase of the COVID era was "abundance of caution." That's itself a tacit admission that they knew their recommendations went too far and they weren't putting enough weight on the secondary effects.

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not_kurt_godel an hour ago | parent [-]

> Our meta-analysis finds that lockdowns in the spring of 2020 had a relatively small effect on COVID-19 mortality and is consistent with the view that voluntary changes in behavior, such as social distancing, played an important role in mitigating the pandemic

I find it strange you bemoan the public health establishment's credibility when your own source shows that people following its guidelines played a greater role in saving hundreds of thousands of lives than legal mandates.

	▲	cavemandaveman 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Social distancing in an infectious disease pandemic is obvious and people would have done that regardless. My point is that the specific advice of the public health establishment was nonsensical (don't wear masks, actually do wear masks and cloth is fine, don't go to parks or beaches but political protests are fine if we're sympathetic to the cause, wear a mask when you walk to your table but not at your table, natural immunity isn't as good as a vaccine, and on and on). It was ridiculous and a big reason public trust in institutions is at an all time low.