New York also sent the elderly with covid back into their nursing/care homes. So New York probably isn't the best example, since they handled the elderly situation so poorly

This is exactly why I have zero faith in any substantive knowledge coming from this pandemic until, what, a hundred years afterward?

So many variables that change the narrative if ignored. This is going to be like everything else (at least in the US). People will seek out sources that confirm their already established belief.

It's hard being positive about, well, anything right now. Is this depression, or is this just a realistic view of humanity?

Unfortunately I think that's the current state of things. It takes a lot of work to get any semblance of the truth, and even then it's extremely localized.

IMHO, C19 was WAY more politicized than it should have been, which caused a lot of the misinformation.

For me to be less despaired, I give up on things like national news (or severely limit it), and hang around positive people, particularly ones doing good things in the community. There are still good people out there doing great things.

I don't think that the media portrayal of many things is a realistic view of reality in most places.

The problem with quoting New York is that New York thought they had Case #1 on March 1 when backmodeling suggests that they were already at Case #10,000. And then they went 3 more weeks before they actually locked down.

So, New York had a WAY higher number of infected per capita than pretty much anywhere other than the early hotspots.