Nothing about safety modeling requires that we understand every risk in the model. I don't understand how you think that, e.g., aviation safety modeling doesn't have to deal with the real world or with real people who do stupid things. It's true that we're probably less able to control all the risk factors in some cases, though, but nothing prevents us from understanding them or doing what we can to make better systems for future pandemics. E.G. we could come up with a better plan for testing and perhaps better ways to share (or leak?) data on new diseases.

The fact is that the public are terrible bosses. We look for people to blame, we're inattentive and have no idea, generally, how to evaluate things on actual metrics. We have no idea which metrics are being gamed and the people who do are actively gaming the metrics and flooding us with cherry-picked information as well as disinformation, though the former is probably more dangerous and more widespread.

The average person in the public will be satisfied as long as we blame some random politician instead of looking for structural reform. E.G. maybe we should adopt Japan's culture of using masks in public when sick, require employers to guarantee minimum standards of sick leave, and change various hospital/ER waiting room practices.