It is so easy to critique the response in hindsight. Or at the time.

But critiques like that ignore uncertainty, risk, and unavoidably getting it "wrong" (on any and all dimensions), no matter what anyone did.

With a new virus successfully circumnavigating the globe in a very short period of time, with billions of potential brand new hosts to infect and adapt within, and no way to know ahead of time how virulent and deadly it could quickly evolve to be, the only sane response is to treat it as extremely high risk.

There is no book for that. Nobody here or anywhere knows the "right" response to a rapidly spreading (and killing) virus, unresponsive to current remedies. Because it is impossible to know ahead of time.

If you actually have an answer for that, you need to write that book.

And take into account, that a lot of people involved in the last response, are very cognizant that we/they can learn from what worked, what didn't, etc. That is the valuable kind of 20-20 vision.

A lot of at-risk people made it to the vaccines before getting COVID. The ones I know are very happy about everything that reduced their risk. They are happy not to have died, despite those who wanted to let the disease to "take its natural course".

And those that died, including people I know, might argue we could have done more, acted as a better team. But they don't get to.

No un-nuanced view of the situation has merit.

The most significant thing we learned: a lot of humanity is preparing to be a problem if the next pandemic proves ultimately deadlier. A lot of humanity doesn't understand risk, and doesn't care, if doing so requires cooperative efforts from individuals.