We were not convinced of the desirability of mask mandates, social distancing and lockdowns on the basis of science. We were convinced of the plausibility of a few conjectures. Then our manipulators (in media, politics, and social networks) took our sense of plausibility and got us to commit to the policies.
This amounted to the leveraging of a cognitive bias. And salesmen will recognize a sales technique right there. Add in fear, and voilà!
This carrot (plausibility) / stick (fear) scenario was then coupled with a few memes not scientific in nature but deliberately anti-scientific, in that they discouraged criticism.
And the extremity of the solutions — in effect ruining many people’s lives, blighting many more who are not technically ruined, leading to starvationin some parts (conveniently far away) — then makes for an anxiety that we assuage with self-righteousness. The “Karen” problem becomes a solution, at this point, for people, being sold a pogrom out of fear, then get to lash out at dissenters. This gives us a social mania that can easily spread by social mechanisms familiar to us all.
The pandemic panic was, in a word, a psy-op — a psychological operation more sophisticated than (but not entirely distinct from) your average advertising campaign — conducted precisely as leaders construct cults and whoop for war.
How psy-ops work is a fascinating thing. Note that one of my joke self-descriptors is “memetic engineer.” My interest in constructing what amounts to con jobs has been, largely, self-defense. Indeed, the tools of defense against such manipulations come in several flavors. Philosophy and science are two of those toolkits.
Most people know almost nothing about either. I wish I knew more. For maybe, had I seen the current psy-op forming in front of my eyes a few weeks earlier, I could have saved (who knows?) millions of lives.
In my own defense, a number of my academic heroes in philosophy and economics saw none of this, and, apparently, still don’t.
Humans are astoundingly easy to trick.
twv
Wirkman Comment 
“In my own defense, a number of my academic heroes in philosophy and economics saw none of this, and, apparently, still don’t.”
In your defense, I can say that Walter Williams was right because he stuck to principle, unlike many of his colleagues. Prudence and fortitude can be shields against the attack of the tricksters.
Short of absolute certitude, a good principle can be the best heuristic in many ocasions. And the habitual bandwagoning which often is sold as an intellectual strategy has not been a lifesaver this time.