>>... it will always be strange to me that people think that a death toll akin to the Spanish Flu wouldn't have had severe mental health effects and destroyed many more businesses than the sporadic lockdowns of the past 2 years.

Epidemiologists used to agree with you, quoting "excess mortality" meaning increase or decrease in all cause death rate, as a way to measure overall effect of any pandemic and response/intervention. That sort of calculation seems to be less popular this time, with people preferring C19 mortality integers in isolation, as if everybody would live forever if not for C19.

I'm guessing that the big lesson will be that science doesn't take sides and fiercely attack the other side. People have become very partisan, preferring to smear and vilify somebody who disagrees, rather than considering and rebutting explanations. Second, government advisors need to (re) learn that you shouldn't focus on just one small measurement in a complex system. Otherwise you risk "the operation was a success but the patient died" logic.

>>It will never be possible to prove to skeptics that not letting COVID ravage through an unprepared population would have been worse on every single one of those terms.

See if you can find some excess mortality calculations for NJ. Even dreaded skeptics can't ignore facts and figures. ;-)