An intelligent fashion to combat COVID was articulated by many at the time: namely, focusing on the elderly and those with specific conditions/comorbidities. It's not like there weren't people with credentials in epidemiology saying this. It was that we had a coordinated effort by the federal government and social media to silence them. We have the receipts and they are available for all of us to see. Of course, since SOP for the past decade has been to instruct us not to believe our lyin' eyes, many have ignored the evidence.

Think about all the insanity: the lockdowns that took who knows how many lives by destroying businesses and isolating human beings, the absolute insanity of pushing parents to give their young kids these vaccines when their kids were at zero risk of dying from COVID, the inflation, shutting down schools, asking Americans to report on neighbors who weren't following the rules, et cetera. Again, this can't be emphasized enough: there were prominent, learned people saying all this was insane at the time, but, "Shut up and get in line."

It turns out that scolding and threatening human beings often provokes them to do the opposite. Go figure.