I think it's pretty clear that we didn't (and still don't) understand either the disease or the consequences of the actions taken in response to the disease very well.
We didn’t even understand the mitigations that were enacted, which is the worst part. To this day nobody can provide evidence that the lockdowns or almost three years of mask mandates did a single damn thing. And if the answer requires a phd to understand, it means it was never worth doing because the massive easy to foresee collateral damage would have outweighed whatever minuscule benefit the measures had.
I think it's pretty clear that we didn't (and still don't) understand either the disease or the consequences of the actions taken in response to the disease very well.