Lockdowns were roundly rejected by an enormous chorus of the top experts in relevant fields, and yet somehow the messaging was spun to make it sound like there was significant debate. And of course, no actual data was ever made available by proponents for the rest of us to even consider, let alone replicate. This is what I mean by the "trust the science" message being a contradiction in terms.
Of the interventions you mention: masking was not shown "time and time again" to be highly - or even moderately - effective. The dearth of rigorous study on the matter is bizarre. The Bangladesh study showed no statistically significant effect for cloth masks, and very modest effects for others - certainly nowhere near enough to justify mandates.
I'm not very aware of the literature on distancing - can you provide sources to research which you think shows that it has "time and time again proven to be highly effective"?
Vaccination of course appeared incredible out of the gate, but we now know that there was significant unblinding during phase III, and the real-world results have not lived up to either the safety or efficacy claims. So, while the vaccines are a great achievement, I'm not sure we can draw the conclusions that the scientific method was as rigorously adopted as we might hope in the context of this discussion about the pitfalls of "trust the science" in matters of public policy. Instead, profit seems to have motivated a relatively shoddy series of rollouts. Moreover, the fallout over the disastrous booster approval cost us a number of experts who resigned in protest (obviously Gruber and Krause are the most notable, but there were many others both at FDA and in academia). So I think it still belongs in the 'loss' column as science-based policy goes.
