America and the UK haven't done well at deferring to actual trained experts with COVID-19 tactics. I have no idea what you might say the public's broad-strokes and goals for COVID19 were.

It seems quite reasonable to say that if "the public" want unclean, unsafe, high-carbon energy sources and deny that climate change is a problem, they should be unable to have any input in the same way that someone who wants a tall building that is unsafe can't have one, and someone who wants a car on the road without passing any safety tests can't have one, and someone who wants to provide unsafe medical treatments is not allowed to.