The varieties of pandemic preparedness plans amounted to springs set to activate and “help” if there was a pandemic.

To the extent those plans were followed, they obliterated civil liberties and had massive harms. 

But in most cases governments reacted with interventions going far BEYOND even those hubristic pandemic plans. 

And — this is not often discussed — the existence of those plans almost surely contributed to the illusion of a pandemic. Just as hammers see nails everywhere, the infrastructures constructed to save us if there ever were a pandemic are disproportionately likely to suffer from an illusion of a pandemic. They want to save us. And they certainly don’t want to be remembered for NOT saving us when they were charged with that righteous task. 

So… 

Plandemic preparedness plans, if they are to exist at all, must 

(1) be steeped in the complex cost-benefit trade-offs of living and breathing societies, 

(2) possess an overarching humility about their ability to possibly master plan anything 

(3) not violate civil liberties [THIS is the most important of all]

(4) learn that the dangers from mass hysteria and social division — such as targeting the evil unclean out group — can be much more severe than the dangers from the emergency itself

(5) realize that they themselves are uniquely biased in their ability to recognize whether or not a pandemic (or any emergency) is actually occurring. 

The folks involved in such “emergency planning” infrastructure are, however, invariably far Left, have the hubris that they can master plan economies and the truth, don’t view civil liberties as a constraint, have childish models of how society will respond to their policies, and have zero insight into the bias peculiar to their situation.