It's very true that things like depression, poverty, closing businesses, hunger, children's development being negatively affected, etc. are also externalities of COVID measures. Very true. Probably also true that we're not putting enough thought into them. Hence why I tries to be very careful to not say "everything we did is right". They're probably not. Hindsight is 20/20.

> it's not a stretch to say that the damage done by the policies is often worse than the disease.

I wouldn't be willing to quantify it as "often", but I would definitely agree that "sometimes" it can be worse.