The two previous zoonotic coronavirus outbreaks, SARS and MERS, had case fatality rates of nearly 10% and over 30% respectively. Before we had reliable clinical data to the contrary, it was reasonable to respond to the very real possibility that COVID had, or very quickly would develop similar lethality.
This risk led to a collaborative effort to sequence the COVID-19 virus and to develop vaccines as quickly as possible. In conjunction with this, there are very large studies evaluating existing drugs using in silico and in vitro efforts to try to find functional bindings. Subsequent to plausible candidates being identified, case studies and then RCTs were conducted on an expedited basis to further qualify candidates.
The result was multiple vaccines that had very high efficacy (the mRNA and a few adenovirus based ones) and several vaccines that exhibited much lower efficacy.
In parallel with this constructive work, there were quite a few charlatans who misconstrued limited clinical evidence or who simply started rumors based on nothing. From this we got people touting inaction, bleach inhalation, hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and other bogus treatments with no effect on the disease and variable levels of lethality of the treatment.
Your turn now. You said that promising avenues were willfully ignored. Provide some examples.