By looking at the fatality rate and who was dying (elderly with co-morbidities). This was known very early on, before anyone in the US had reacted to it and months before the so called vaccines were available. I had numerous conversations with others that did the same. The general consensus was that the primary motivation was election year politics, not the virus.
I looked at it in the late Feb timeframe, well before circus started and decided it wasn’t that big a deal with even those inflated numbers. I made up my mind to just live my life and ignore it as best I could. Fortunately the county I live in typically had about 30% compliance with state mask mandates and it’s leadership fought the state all the way through.
So wearing a mask was something I only did at work and only during the brief periods when it were enforced and when they were looking.
All in all, in my little corner of the world a majority of the population never took it seriously.
“By looking at the fatality rate and who was dying (elderly with co-morbidities). This was known very early on, “
So you can point to information published “early on” to back this up, right? Something from Nature or NIH?