A fun counterfactual to consider is how things might have shaken out differently if a time-traveler could communicate the following to health authorities in winter of '19/'20:
1. There's a novel coronavirus coming out of Wuhan
2. It's transmitted primarily indoors through respiratory droplets
3. The symptoms are linked to endothelial dysfunction
It seems like we burned through a lot of social cohesion just to get to 2 of those certainties.