alt Hacker News1 million excess deaths in the US alone, with an infection rate rapid enough to bring the hospital system to its knees. The threat level was judged perfectly.
You can blame the cost of living directly on the corporations charging more for their products than required, and buying up housing to extort renters. Inflation-wise, you have the Trump administration to blame for writing stimulus checks with his name on them, but mainly the corrupt Congress for spending an order of magnitude more on directly paying corporations with zero oversight to make sure they were playing by the rules (PPP).
More people died in the so called Hong Kong Flu in the 1960s. In some places more people died from suicide due to the enforced social isolation. I knew people who drank themselves to death or took to heroin. Others were not able to receive cancer diagnoses or treatment.
So no, not worth the cost. The deaths were very much exaggerated. In fact, pretty much every death I heard of was "Covid plus X" not Covid alone. It didn't affect the lower age group much.
"You can blame the cost of living directly on the corporations charging more for their products"
It has everything to do with shutting down most of the global economy for most of two years, and destroying supply chains. In some places in Africa, the annual harvest was destroyed because of the hysteria.
Not to mention rampant economic warfare by centralised government. They could have stopped debt and mortgages being called in after they forced people to stop working. Not to mention taxation.
The idea that I can't talk to my neighbour over a fence but Amazon and Pizza delivery can go door to door is sheer lunacy and unscientific.