Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Looking back at the pandemic it is clear we made a lot of mistakes, that many of the costs of the pandemic were self-inflicted. The Swedish example, no lockdowns and excess mortality on the low end of the range, suggests that the costs of lockdown may have been unnecessary. Extensive precautions against surface transmission, based on what turned out to be an early mistaken theory of contagion, were continued to the end. Vaccine effectiveness was tested with a controlled double-blind study, scientifically ideal but slow, instead of by vaccinating and deliberately infecting volunteers which would have reduced by several months the delay before vaccines became available. The next pandemic will be a different disease so what were mistakes this time might not be next — but we might be able to learn some of the reasons for the mistakes we made.” (02/23/25)
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/lessons-for-the-next-plague