Wrong expert opinion (no airborne transmission) → respirators not recommended → multiple lockdowns until vaccines became widely available → millions of dead people, massive economic and social disruption
This could have easily happened:
Fast expert opinion change (no airborne transmission → airborne transmission) → use first lockdown to manufacture respirators for everyone → use respirators until pandemic burns out or vaccines and therapeutics become widely available → thousands of dead people, only one lockdown, minimal economic and social disruption
The ideal scenario (everyone prepped with respirators for decades) could have also happened but expert opinion seemed to have been too stubborn to have considered airborne transmission as a real possibility before this pandemic, and even when sufficient evidence was acquired, this opinion was slow to change.
For similar pandemics (or future variants of the current virus that won’t respond to available vaccines or therapeutics) the solution is obvious: use respirators until the pandemic burns out or effective vaccines and therapeutics become widely available. Strangely, there still has been no big push to send respirators to areas of the world where vaccines and therapeutics like Paxlovid are less available.
Another thing that expert opinion continues to get wrong is its focus on the not-that-great disposable respirators rather than the better-in-almost-every-way reusable respirators (including PAPRs). If this doesn’t change and another pandemic (or nasty variant) develops, the disposables will run out again, a lot of them will fail (as they probably do today) to provide adequate protection (due to poor face seals), and the results will be similar to (or worse than) the current pandemic.
This is what happened:
Wrong expert opinion (no airborne transmission) → respirators not recommended → multiple lockdowns until vaccines became widely available → millions of dead people, massive economic and social disruption
This could have easily happened:
Fast expert opinion change (no airborne transmission → airborne transmission) → use first lockdown to manufacture respirators for everyone → use respirators until pandemic burns out or vaccines and therapeutics become widely available → thousands of dead people, only one lockdown, minimal economic and social disruption
The ideal scenario (everyone prepped with respirators for decades) could have also happened but expert opinion seemed to have been too stubborn to have considered airborne transmission as a real possibility before this pandemic, and even when sufficient evidence was acquired, this opinion was slow to change.
For similar pandemics (or future variants of the current virus that won’t respond to available vaccines or therapeutics) the solution is obvious: use respirators until the pandemic burns out or effective vaccines and therapeutics become widely available. Strangely, there still has been no big push to send respirators to areas of the world where vaccines and therapeutics like Paxlovid are less available.
Another thing that expert opinion continues to get wrong is its focus on the not-that-great disposable respirators rather than the better-in-almost-every-way reusable respirators (including PAPRs). If this doesn’t change and another pandemic (or nasty variant) develops, the disposables will run out again, a lot of them will fail (as they probably do today) to provide adequate protection (due to poor face seals), and the results will be similar to (or worse than) the current pandemic.