This happened all day long during Covid. The answer was never “we don’t know yet” which was at least honest but instead it was always “just trust us”. Exactly like i use to hear from preachers growing up.
The difference between public health and basic research. To stop an epidemic in flight one has to go with ones best guess and that saves lives so they do it.
We weren't told it was the best guess to save lives. We were told it was the science, and this science was very fast to adapt to alarmist narratives while being incredibly slow (sometimes taking years) to adapt to reality.
And that's before you take into account things like BLM rallies being encouraged during COVID while less politically correct gatherings were banned or decried as "super spreader events." [1]
Public health also studies the most effective communication strategies for sharing public health info even in the face of uncertainty. I bet they will be more explicit about uncertainty next time based on the last time, but that is why they didn't say it. The field started out with a person breaking the handle to an invented ell, not even using communications but taking physical actions to stop the spread.
As far as the speed of revisions, my memory is the initial advice to wash your hands so much faded within months, as well as the wash your groceries advice. It took the US some time to notice how effective masks were in Japan, and push for masking. And now good air filtration for public spaces is gaining momentum, even as the deaths from COVID declined.
And you aren't a bit alarmed anytime a novel virus hits an immunologically naïf population, well you should be.
> I bet they will be more explicit about uncertainty next time based on the last time
This is highly euphemistic. We were explicitly lied to for our own good, over and over again. Including about masks being ineffective early on (to save them for healthcare providers), about ventilators, about the effectiveness of the vaccine, about the vulnerability of normal populations as compared to older ones, the plausible origins of the virus itself, etc. It was over and over again. And again--that's without the injection of left-wing politics as noted in my previous comment.
> As far as the speed of revisions
We had kids out of schools for years. An entire generation is now significantly behind comparable cohorts, and the only reason we even stopped is because the opposition eventually made it untenable. We forced many small businesses to fail and gave out interest-free loans to many others that never need to be paid back. People were forced to get vaccinated or lose their jobs.
I feel like our response to COVID-19 (at least in the US) is like a litmus test for how well one accepts authoritarianism. If one lived through that as an adult, I don't know how one would trust what the medical establishment says next time around, except to trust that it's what they want the unwashed masses to think.
I’d just like to add that the epidemic wasn’t stopped at all. Everyone still caught COVID.
Were outcomes worse than they otherwise would have been? That’s an impossible question to answer. Are there serious studies on the impact of public health interventions?
I saw one study of relative death rates that concluded if all US has followed California standards, about 800,000 fewer people would have died. And remember "flatten the curve"? The goal isn't to stop everyone getting the virus but to slow it down enough that the health care capacity is sufficient. A quick google finds this study and a few more recommended: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-31709-2 even the way the virus isn't killing as many vulnerable people as we get it the Nth time after M vaccinations is a success if the lower the curve strategy.
Even if you still be the fiction of the vaccine saving lives. It was the life of an obese 80 year old with 3 other comorbidities ... for a few months.
The lockdowns resulted in inflation, and caused a lot more poverty and deaths worldwide since. And retarded the normal development of many children.
And we still don't know what kind of long term damage the vaccine caused.
My friend that trusted the science, and took every booster, only stopped when she got myocarditis.
