> If the government had widely publicized the (imperfect, of course) thinking of experts and allowed informed citizens to make their own tradeoffs, I don't think anyone would have complained.

They did that, widely. The alcohol withdrawal thing was all over; that's how I know about it. (Googling it finds articles all over, in both national and local news outlets. ChatGPT will also happily explain it.) They can't force people to listen, though, let alone comprehend.

> I guess the question is whether Covid was so terrible a threat as to demand that kind of subjugation to authority.

One must be careful not to inject too much hindsight into that assessment.