Or how about people just use GNU instead of GAFAM crapware? Turn "silently installing things in the background" off by default and maintain user control over all their hardware.

It's not like Richard Stallman hasn't been warning of this sort of thing happening for decades - the GNU project exists for a reason, and we should use their code for general purpose computing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25402024

I think covid has shown that when the world is faced with a pandemic, not everyone agrees on what's common sense is in terms of how to respond as a society/government.

The difficulty of taking a government-sponsored and government-accessible substantial privacy risk (at a minimum) is something that some will find utterly unacceptable and others will think might be concerning or unacceptable in general but is righteously justified in this specific situation.

The first group’s common sense says “don’t install”; the second group’s common sense says “install via subterfuge if necessary”.

Common sense is not so common.