And more generally, I think it's great that lots of effort went into things that were then superseded by things that worked better. Sitting around waiting for perfect knowledge would have meant a much larger death toll. Indeed, the knowledge about better treatments came because people tried a great number of things and then doubled down on the ones that worked. Trying things is never wasted effort if at the time they were a good guess about what might work.
The problem with contact tracing in the US definitely wasn't an excess of effort: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03518-4
And more generally, I think it's great that lots of effort went into things that were then superseded by things that worked better. Sitting around waiting for perfect knowledge would have meant a much larger death toll. Indeed, the knowledge about better treatments came because people tried a great number of things and then doubled down on the ones that worked. Trying things is never wasted effort if at the time they were a good guess about what might work.