It wasn’t Covid that did this. It was government mandates in response to Covid. Printing money let everyone who supported these government actions ignore all of the tradeoffs involved and obfuscate what, under hard money, would be a direct comparison.
What you are arguing for is a kind of financial authoritarianism. You are using words like “driver’s seat” and “pilot” to describe an intense amount of power in the hands of unelected persons. Financial authoritarianism can be used to pay for other kinds of authoritarianism like lockdowns, concentration camps, or a war spanning multiple decades and the entire globe. The First World War would have ended much sooner if the belligerents were unable to steal the wealth of their populace by printing money. The arguments you are making, that recessions need money printing - those arguments were going to be made by government-funded academics who obviously have an incentive to argue that governments should not be constrained in their budgets.
Hard money makes the cost of government action immediate and legible. Hard money puts constraints on what the government can do without taking money directly from people who feel the cost immediately. This is why authoritarians really don’t want hard money.