Well, the “anxieties and neuroses of society” are the only reason we're still forced to wear cloth masks in certain places, so...

No one is forced to wear a cloth mask anywhere -- a superior mask is always accepted. The inferior cloth mask is merely accepted, not required.

Here you distort a laxness in COVID mitigation to describe it as the very opposite.

God, all these ellipsis and references to vague fears is tiring.

The pandemic didn’t turn out to be a bogeyman that had no impact. Oh shucks—just a common cold after. But I guess that’s too “blue pill” of me to say.

However much of a bogeyman the pandemic turned out to be, the concern is that the state, proverbially, doesn't let a good crisis go to waste. Such was the case after 9/11; and there are signs that such is also the case now.

I agree that the aftermath of 9/11 wasn’t handled properly. You can’t react to a terror attack by becoming more afraid of terrorism—that just means that the terror attack was a success.