With hindsight it is easy to armchair quarterback this. But, at the time, all we knew is that hospitals were slammed, morgues were overflowing into refrigerator trucks, misinformation was rampant, and officials were dealing with a very fluid situation from what limited information they had. I approve of the philosophy that when you don't know, err on the side of caution.

That's the point. We allowed the government and others to label everything that didn't conform to The Official Narrative as "misinformation". Some of that had devastating effects.

For example. Sweden never locked down and they were going to lose everyone in the country went the narrative. Yet their case fatality rate was on 0.9%...comparable to the UK and Spain and less than ours and Canada (1.1% each).

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

There was data from several sources that should have informed the national health strategy but once The Official Narrative took hold the idea of using that cruise ship that was parked off the coast wasn't allowable for some reason.

And don't get me started on school closings. We're going to pay for that in so many ways for DECADES.

I admit my bias here in that 1poorlady was diagnosed with cancer a couple of weeks before COVID was in the news. So she had MAJOR surgery that should have required about 4 days in the hospital, but instead it was outpatient. I was her nurse at home, dealing with drains, and other stuff as best I could. They did it outpatient because a) there were no beds, and b) they didn't want her catching COVID because the hospital was full of COVID patients. I couldn't even wait for her in the waiting room.

Sorry to hear that. Is she okay now?

Because of partisan bickering, the US much less so. Red states were hit the worst because of the partisanship,

Were they?
cdc.gov - Mortality final

The data shows a pretty clean break along north-south lines...as in the weather probably played more of a role than thought.

As for partisanship:
politifact.com - Biden harris doubted trump covid vaccines not v
Here's what Harris said:
"Well, I think that's going to be an issue for all of us. I will say that I would not trust Donald Trump. And it would have to be a credible source of information that talks about the efficacy and the reliability of whatever he's talking about. I will not take his word for it. He wants us to inject bleach. I ' no, I will not take his word."

(Politifact tries *mightily* to spin this in her favor)