From what I can find it looks like everyone followed the mandates for the most part. And actually punished those who broke it from normal citizens to politicians. The 50 billion in losses is pretty bad. But I'd rather an economic slump than the intelligence estimate of 40 million dead China is lying about.
From what I've been able to determine of the US covid situation - the vast majority of US casualties caused by Covid (as opposed to co-morbidities where Covid was present, but /not/ causative) - were among those in the >75 y/o range, Of those a very sizable portion were a result of the NY nursing home fiasco where elderly (by definition most at risk) were locked in with covid positive patients sent home from hospitals to improve hospital reported death rates.
As for 'everyone followed the mandates' - define everyone and define mandates? Sweden never locked down. FL opened up while CA was still in full-on gulag mode. Most of the rural areas of most states never took mandates seriously in the first place. Nor did most of the poorer countries (what we used to call the third world) Everything we've since learned about the virus has confirmed that it spread fastest in densely packed areas using common air filtration/circulation systems - like apartment buildings with central AC and most mass-transit systems. Even there, death rates were limited almost exclusively to those with compromised immune systems - the elderly, the extremely obese, etc. Hell, if containing the virus was sooo important, why did we not lock down travel to/from China when we first learned about the virus?
Let us be honest with ourselves, and at least
learn something from this multi-year fiasco.
1. The lockdowns didn't prevent the virus from spreading, nor did they materially reduce death rates -c.f. Sweden's death rate vs Canada's or California's. Whether this was because they were implemented in a haphazard, after the fact fashion as security-theater for political reasons, or because we never had much chance of slowing down what is, at the end of the day, effectively a nastier variant of the common (hint is in the name) cold, is something for others to sort out.
2. What the lockdowns
did accomplish was throwing lots of people out of work, crashing logistical chains, exploding government debt, spiking substance abuse and suicide rates, worsening education for a generation of children, and giving the already power hungry a taste of what greater control could feel like.
3. The lockdowns proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that high ranking politicians, bureaucrats, doctors, academics, and corporate executives can and will happily lie, and cover for each others lies, at the cost of everyone else's lives and livelihoods, all to escape the eminently foreseeable,
and actually foreseen, consequences of their own earlier lies and ongoing fuckups.
4. The lockdowns also proved that rules are only applied to the ruled, not the rulers. That whatever we might be told growing up, whatever we might tell ourselves, whatever 'our' laws and constitutions may purport to claim, we are
subjects, not citizens.
There is no rule of law. We have no rights, only privileges that our rulers find convenient to extend and will gleefully retract at their own convenience and discretion.
4.a The treatment, in particular of so-called critical industries and workers vs everyone else, was a hint. The treatment of the BLM riots and protests vs people going to church, attending funerals, or protesting lockdowns was simply a slap in the face intended to keep the plebes in line.
So yes, the rulers of both California and Canada fucked over their economies, and their people. They did so for neglible non-political benefit. They initially did so in an ignorant panic (which in itself, is no glowing recommendation), and continued to do so after the stupidity of the action was clear for reasons of pride and privilege. They did so longer and harder than other places. The people who enacted and supported these policies have paid, and will pay, no price for them, nor will they bear even rhetorical responsibility for the harms they chose to inflict on the rest of us. If Marduk chooses to classify that as 'self-sanctioning' then I can't discern any grounds to dispute that characterization.