I agree that this has been a very stressful time, but I have little doubt that the deaths and misery would have been far. far worse without the vaccines.
Lots of things were different for the pandemic in 1918, which was estimated to have killed 50 million people in the world, but it's a part of history that feels very remote. Our expectations have been naive and unrealistic with denial as the initial reaction of many, offering wild assumptions that the news was manufactured and that it wasn't worse than the flu, followed by denials that we could possibly have more than 50-100,000 deaths from this pandemic or that 20% infected would produce herd immunity.
Fear and ambiguity about the course of events led to anger and finding people and institutions to blame. When people feel vulnerable, they become desperate for solutions that offer closure and certainty. It's much harder to live with lack of certainty and a sense of vulnerability, which can make us easy targets for charlatans who present easy answers.
There are no easy answers. Pandemics can morph and change their weapons in ways that can't be anticipated and may have consequences that are long-term, well after supposed recovery. After each of the 3 waves of the 1918 flu, there was another mysterious and devastating epidemic of Encephalitis Lethargica that killed an estimated 500,000 people worldwide. Clusters of cases followed each of the 3 waves of that flu and are considered a post 1918 pandemic complication. Survivors were often brain damaged, afflicted with Parkinsonism or with bizarre behavioral disturbances. Oliver Sacks famous book and the movie, "Awakenings," described a NY hospital housing such chronically ill patients. For many, Covid may leave long term neurological damage too, some of which is evident now in Long-Haulers who have been ill for more than a year with a long list of symptoms.
All of this is frightening, but the last thing we need to do is be at each other's throats rather than supporting the remarkable work that is being done to get this behind us. Of course, there have been missteps and errors that may seem obvious in retrospect, but considering the possibilities, we have accomplished astonishing advances in understanding the science of this virus very quickly and protecting us from more dire consequences.