I'd never mock the perspective, the situation is too serious.

When there was an active fire threatening my town a couple years, emergency issued an evacuation order and arrested people who came into the area. When I worked as a teacher in the 1990s, I had to get various vaccines as a condition for having a job. When I traveled in 2012, I also had to get some vaccines to visit various countries. Health departments have required restaurants to control the behavior of their customers including preventing them from coughing on the salad bar.

Covid involved the state using it's existing powers on a larger scale, no doubt. And how well it did that can certainly be debated. But all the powers the state used existed already.

So the arguments that try to put paint this situation as fundamentally new and wrong are incorrect. That they were accompanied by efforts to also falsify the nature of the illness itself reinforces the perspective that they were disingenuous. But I recognize people can convince themselves of a lot when it suits them.

if we can’t understand why those folks are really pissed off

As far as I can tell, the anger about state actions against and claims that it was some new are part of the generally polarized state of American politics. So, I think I understand. People are map 'cause they're convinced themselves of self-serving baloney. That's not an unusual source of anger for humans. But this doesn't make me "understanding" as you can imagine. Indeed, those people sure aren't the only angry ones and shouldn't be treat as special for their anger.