A good post at the Effective Altruism Forum on all the stuff we could have done to stop the pandemic but didn't:

Probably the biggest mistake was not intentionally infecting vaccinated volunteers. This could be done in 1 month, vs 6.5 months for the ecological trials that the entire world did out of misguided PR ethics. (2.5 is probably more realistic given signups, approvals, and big pharma's slow data analysis and reporting. That's still hundreds of thousands of lives.)

1DaySooner wrote a letter. The world's foremost consequentialist signed. The world's foremost deontologist signed. Two of the most prominent bioethicists in the world signed. 15 Nobelists signed. Dozens of philosophers who otherwise agree on extremely little signed. But they're unethical.

Rarely do I so strongly feel the boot of others on my neck, and humanity's neck.

The one distinctively courageous thing about the UK - the human challenge trials which got 40,000 volunteers - actually eventually started!.. In January 2021, with n=90.

I am extremely puzzled why China or one of the other ahem non-individualist governments didn't do these.

Lots more at the link.