I'm not sure it was really about scapegoating. I mean, yes, Trump's "China-virus" rhetoric certainly didn't cool any heads, but I heard very little about taking any action against China for the pandemic.

It was clear to me very early on, just by looking at publicly available data, that the virus didn't pose a significant risk to youngish (55 and below) reasonably healthy people. The efficacy of masks below n95 grade was also pretty immediately questionable. Not to mention the absolute disdain for natural immunity even after it was shown to be superior to vaccine immunity.

To be honest I'd say the majority of the amygdala response came from health officials. They showed zero willingness to genuinely respond to the data in designing policy. Even as people lost businesses, children lost over a year at school and mental health issues skyrocketed due to isolation.

I mean, look at what happened in Australia and New Zealand and Germany, with the police beating people who wanted to be let out of their homes. Look at what's still happening in China.

People, perfectly understandably, got desperate. And the hacks were able to point to these clear logical inconsistencies. So of course some people going to start believing stupid stuff. I think more transparency and more logic would not only have saved lives, but maintained desperately needed faith in health officials.