>Not to mention people turning basic hygiene (wearing a mask when you're sick) into a political argument,
That was not basic hygeine in the US or most of the West at the time.
It became political the second public officials made it mandatory. It would've been even if everyone had agreed.
Most masks were not medical grade N95s.
>, and people deliberately downplaying the severity of it,
No, they just disagreed. They weren't secretly agreeing with you, but lying.
>There was literally a plague where a solid chunk of the population literally decided to make it worse,
These people said, at the top of their lungs, that they did not believe the mainstream claims about COVID.
You are ignoring that so you can convince yourself they were malicious and therefore wrong.
>the vaccine reduces your chances of infection and moderates the symptoms but it doesn't guarantee immunity,
I seem to recall a lot of pro-vaccine people treating the vaccine like it granted immunity. Only later did it switch to "oh, no, it's actually just for the symptoms".
I also saw loads of people asking why the normal vaccine development and testing time was apparently unnecessary for COVID vaccines.
I can't recall a single pro-vaccine person answering.
>nd the government's official stance is "it's just a new flu", as if it doesn't literally cause your immune system to forget how to do anything.
Multiple governments, across the world, shut down normal life and travel in order to stop COVID. Including two US Presidents, from two different parties.
That generally doesn't happen with the flu.
Now, anti-vaccine/lockdown people did call COVID a "flu" to show what they thought of its severity. Not the government.
