True--but none of it, including the RESPONSES to the pandemic, are an ACCIDENT. "Unintentionally stupid" and "intentionally evil" aren't mutually exclusive adjectives. Americans--HUMANS--with any sense have long-since recognized this unfortunate fact and facet of humanity, which is all-too-often left unchecked.

The only question remaining is: Exactly how effing senseless are most Americans?

I tend to agree with Mencken, on this subject: "No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is a folly."

Assuming the "best" of intentions or sense from the "most," the lowest common denominator of ANY group, is historically and apparently statistically inadvisable.