My favorite comment was from a libertarian friend who said that although quarantine certainly would have worked, better to sacrifice a few hundred thousand than validate the idea that the Feds can sometimes tell you what to do with good effect.

I think my favorite example is food rationing in the UK in WW2. It's a great example because it shows both sides are right:

(a) Rationing resulted in people eating healthier (much more veggies, much less processed sugar and fats), and as a result many public health measures actually went up during the war, even as the public perception was that food quality was poor.

and yet at the same time

(b) Once the infrastructure for rationing was set up the temptation was irresistible to continue with it past immediate need (rationing in the UK continued for decades after WW2) for reasons that basically amounted to bureaucratic convenience.

So it's both true that government paternalism works (the 'leftist view'), and that giving the government tools to coordinate better simply results in the government using those tools for its ends, not yours (the 'libertarian view.')