Medical paper from 2006 authored by the John Hopkins epidemiologist that eradicated smallpox. Scary how right he was, and that none of the recommendations were followed.

Conclusions / recommendations are at the end in the section titled "COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO A PANDEMIC: A SUMMARY OF POSSIBLE ACTIONS."

Quote:

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An overriding principle. Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.

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Paper is imbedded at the end of the short introductory article:

https://www.aier.org/article/how-a-free-society-deals-with-pandemics-according-to-legendary-epidemiologist-and-smallpox-eradicator-donald-henderson/#ftnt66

We did the total opposite of that, from the social aspects to the leadership

What I find really interesting is that they don't recommend cancelling large events, as at each event, a single person only actually directly interacts with a few number of people, not thousands, so you don't get the spread that you think you do.

Quote:

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Cancelling or postponing meetings or events in- volving large numbers of people.

Intuitively, this would appear to be a helpful adjunct to reduce contacts among people and so mitigate the effects of the epidemic. However, individuals normally have a great many contacts throughout the community on a daily basis: shopping in stores, attending church, traveling on public transport, and so on. Recognizing that the spread of influenza is primarily by person-to-person contact, any one individual, even in a large gathering, would have only a limited number of such close encounters with infected people. Thus, cancelling or postponing large meetings would not be likely to have any significant effect on the development of the epidemic. While local concerns may result in the closure of particular events for logical reasons, a policy directing communitywide closure of public events seems inadvisable.

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I genuinely hope that this whole pandemic will be instrumental to shaping how we deal with future pandemics. I have a feeling the lessons learned here will be long forgotten the next time they're needed, though.

The rest of the world borrowed the mitigation strategy from the communists...these outcomes were predictable.