I advocated lockdowns combined with strong social safety net protections and a thorough testing regime and the person still said "yeah but the other effects." When I pressed as to what effects, they said "well children won't be able to socialize." Like yeah.... that's bad, but you know what else can effect a child's mental health: mommy/daddy/granpa/grandma/etc dying from a totally preventable pathogen.... Jesus and this person is in "academia" doing anthro and shit....
That's the insidiousness of the western leader's poor response to covid.
They have half-hearted lockdowns to minimize the impact on the economy (most importantly to minimise the impact on their corporate donors) and keep opening early, letting it spread, then half-heartedly lockdown and repeat. Eventually, you make lockdown look ineffective and the population is so exhausted that you can open up, say it's what the public wants and they'll accept the deaths as a sad fact of life.