Take the current virus. We realize that the republican version of 'it's a hoax and everything is fine' is a lie. But so is the democrat version of 'you need to never leave your house or you're a murderer'.

The simple fact is that without having solid numbers for:

1). The true infection rate.

2). The true age-adjusted mortality rate.

3). The asymptomatic r0 rate.

Any policy anyone suggests tells you more about the person suggesting it than about how effective it will be. It could be that reality is closer to the republican version, or the democrat one. But without a lot more science that no one is doing we will not know until decades down the line when people start digging up corpses and testing for the virus and finally doing some basic statistics.

And that's before we even look at what the economic impact is of the virus.