It's not necessarily about the ends never justifying the means; some of us just have arrived at the impression that the same means of deception and authoritarianism are being justified so often by a variety of ends that perhaps their proponents don't actually believe there is a terrible lot of justification needed for them.

I feel like you are straying from the actual topic at hand. Rationing n-95 masks = "deception and authoritarianism"? I see the deception. The rest of your sentence I don't understand at all.