To be fair, I think it's less about control than about naked populism- vaccine mandates, and many other covid measures are wildly popular. It's basically mob rule. Liberal democracy is supposed to have built in protections for this, but when they get ignored, all bets are off. Right wing populists ignoring liberal democratic norms was the big fear a few years ago, and now it has swung far to the left.

There is some element of control as you say, but I think it's more in the "show you're a member of our religion" sense than in the government or corporate control sense. This is a war people are waging on themselves.