It's also worth noting that the mass media has panicked populations and thus driven politicians to act (as is so often the case) incoherently and counter-productively in order to be seen to be "doing something." But if we step back from the media hype we see a rather curious picture. First of all, we see that SARS-COV2 isn't actually very infectious. After 15 months the global infection rate is about 20% of that seen in the far shorter annual flu season. While SARS-COV2 is definitely more lethal to the old, the frail, and the obese than flu, it's still hardly fatal to anyone at all. Even the very worst-hit places have experienced a per capita mortality rate of less than two-tenths of one percent of the population - and this is regardless of lockdowns (in fact, ironically, the hardest-hit nations are those that have imposed strict lockdowns). If we had bothered to look at the data instead of being captive to sensationalist media reportage, our response to SARS-COV2 could have been far more coherent, rational - and effective. Unfortunately people really do believe what they read and see on TV, which is why we are deep in our current self-created economic catastrophe. And why, far from self-indulgent Western hysteria, 250,000,000 people are literally starving to death because we shut down global commerce. But they have dark skins, live far away, aren't featured on our TV news, so we really don't have to think about them at all. Life is great!