It's February 3rd, Australia and the USA closed their borders to China. Trump's political opponents are calling him xenophobic and racist. Canada denounced "the spread of misinformation and fear across Canadian society" and called on the opposition to "not sensationalize the risk to Canadians",[15][16] while Tam endorsed the position by the World Health Organization, which "advises against any kind of travel and trade restrictions, saying that they are inappropriate and could actually cause more harm than good in terms of our global effort to contain" the disease.[15]
Your own advisors are likely telling to much of the same thing. Afterall, it's not even a Pandemic yet, that doesnt happen until March 11th. You tend to agree Trump is xenophobic and racist. So you don't shutdown the border. But you could potentially save lots of lives if you do shut it down. You decide not to because you dont want to be called xenophobic and racist.
Month later, March 13th comes along and Canada is finally pretending to close it's borders; when in reality is actually not. Multiple flights a day were still coming from China.
You look at the Canadians and think they might have an idea what they are doing. Maybe those flights are just repatriating their own citizens? You look into it and there's absolutely no checks to see if those people are healthy, they arent really serious about the lockdown.
You think, perhaps we should wear masks? But Canada's chief of public health outright dismisses the idea. It's april now and Tam is saying "people who are not sick should not wear a face mask at all"
You figure that perhaps she's educated and knows well, perhaps masks dont work? You could order that you must wear a mask to go out in public. It might save lives but surely Chief of Public Health in Canada knows what she is doing.
It's now May 20th and this same person now says we should wear masks? Why didn't you tell the citizens of Antagria to wear masks sooner?
At what point do you as Emperor make the decision to lockdown? At what point do you face being called xenophobic and a racist and actually lockdown?
You also realize that when you lockdown and removed fundamental human rights. You need to show people you're re-opening. So you lockdown more than you even need to, in order to have a reopening where you end up at the appropriate lockdown level. So you even shutdown your government's parks and other outdoor areas. Only to open them up shortly afterwards.
Why is Covid so politicized? Why is there corruption and suppression of science? Because without suppressing Covid dissent someone might say you have completely screwed up your response to the issue.