And ignorance cost lives. Not having the information to make an informed decision cost lives.
They knew as early as late Jan just had bad and dangerous this was going to be. In mid-Feb the local VA hospital closed a unit and started a 6 week construction project to turn it into a negative pressure area for treating COVID patients, the same time our president was telling us it would be gone in two weeks. At the time we were laughing at how stupid the VA was since COVID would be gone by the time this was finished. Turns out they knew more than they were telling us.
With the Fed Govt withholding information we ended up getting very mixed message from the states and the Feds. This led to people not taking it seriously at all to start with. Also, since he would not admit how bad it was, we as a country were late getting things like testing kits produced and enough PPE gear for our front line workers to use so they ended up reusing mask and gowns for days, when they are supposed to be changed between every patient.
Yep, that was fucked up as well.