There were also scary studies coming out of China (though this was later) showing a single positive guy going for a run in a park infecting loads of people. The dynamics have only changed because people have partial immunity now, but it was like wildfire and it is still going up and down in terms of transmission.

To be honest, I think it's fine there was some over-reaction. Millions of people died. I think it's ok to be slightly uncomfortable for a little bit under such extreme circumstances. To be quite honest, there was an under-reaction. We had an opportunity to shut it down and decided not to follow the science like China did because of American exceptionalism. Now we are living with it forever until there is a better vaccine.

China protected their entire population until a vaccine was made available. This means their death rate was likely a third of ours. Their official statistics paint too rosy a picture (they claim only ~60k died), but a simple back of the napkin calculation 0.1% vaccinated die, 1% unvaccinated die, means they did 10x better than let-it-rip. We did something like 3x better than let-it-rip.