> I wonder how much irreparable damage the lockdowns did to the economy as we knew it before the pandemic.
Reasonable enough to wonder, but not without the corollary question: how much damage would have been to the economy without lockdowns? Yes, there were no doubt many side effects of the lockdowns that were not anticipated. But we lost at least 1M people in the USA (significantly more if you use excess death data). Lockdowns may have prevented that from being anywhere from 2-5 times higher. If we had lost 3M people, we get close to 1% of the total population of the USA, and the impact of that on the economy seems potentially enormous.
Reasonable enough to wonder, but not without the corollary question: how much damage would have been to the economy without lockdowns? Yes, there were no doubt many side effects of the lockdowns that were not anticipated. But we lost at least 1M people in the USA (significantly more if you use excess death data). Lockdowns may have prevented that from being anywhere from 2-5 times higher. If we had lost 3M people, we get close to 1% of the total population of the USA, and the impact of that on the economy seems potentially enormous.