No one seemed to understand that those kinds of things were going to have much more drastic effects for everyday people as well. This same thing goes for the stock market, sure I don't have a ton of money it it, but I do keep putting money in my 401k and so do a lot of other people that are depending on it for their retirement, when the stock market takes hits it effects me just as much as the "elite".
It would have been irresponsible to risk chicken with something that might have had MERS lethality.
Eventually we put tighter bounds on those quantities, and could make more informed decisions. But yes, all stages of the pandemic were unfortunately people talking past each other, without being actually curious about the pros/cons of various approaches.
But it's been awhile since the political class has had to deal with an actual existential science problem... so that muscle wasn't very strong.
In short, a lot of what’s happening comes back to the debate we had during the early part of the pandemic... one side said shutting down the world would have major consequences down the line and we’re seeing that now.