Will, I can think of literally dozens of better analogies for looking at the way various nations have mishandled their reaction to SARS-COV-2. Furthermore, while millions died in WWI, covid-19 has killed hardly anyone in relative terms and the mortality rate continues to decline even as infections rise because doctors have thankfully discontinued the practice of ventilating people, which data now shows unnecessarily killed around 70% of patients who had it inflicted on them. The reality is that SARS-COV-2 was never the existential threat the media convinced everyone was the case; to date around 500,000 people have died but no one mentions the fact that around 650,000 people die in a bad flu season (WHO figures). Furthermore, as around 6,000,000 die each month, that means total covid-19 deaths to date are just over 1% of total deaths, and furthermore the Oxford University study of 17,000 covid-19 deaths in the UK showed that around two-thirds of those deaths would have occurred anyway due to pre-existing conditions. And finally, even if we pretend all covid-19 deaths were due to the virus and not over-zealous medical treatments or pre-existing conditions, that means that even the most badly hit nations have experienced a per capita mortality rate averaging 0.057% of the population. And covid-19, compared to the 3,000,000 who will die this year of obesity-related diseases and the 7,800,000 who will die of smoking-related diseases, barely registers. Media hype and reality are rarely coincident.