was the lack of available testing.

All we knew from watching the spread across the globe and then at home in NYC was that once people started showing up at hospitals it was too late - the virus would spread silently until it exploded with exponential numbers of sick people in ICUs and morgues.

If we had had more widespread available testing so we could see where the virus had spread and how quickly it was spreading there, we could have reacted *locally* and shut things down where the virus actually was (whether mandatory or voluntarily with people changing their behavior when they knew COVID was spreading in their area).

Instead, since we didn't know where the virus was, we had to shut down everything everywhere at the same time on the assumption that any place could be the next NYC and we wouldn't know it until it was too late.

I think that also altered the trajectory of people's resistance to mandates. They were forced to stay home even though there weren't problems in their area (we just couldn't know that until after the fact), so they wouldn't want to listen to future "being told what to do."

The lack of testing left everyone flying blind and putting authorities in a position of feeling forced to overreact because they didn't want the next NYC on their hands...which then had chain reaction impacts for the rest of the pandemic.