The craziness surrounding covid was somewhat predictable

Here in the US (and likely other places), you have a pharma industry shoving amphetamines and antidepressants in people's faces. You have a complacent government that's too lazy, corrupt, and incompetent to address this obvious wrong (among many others)

So because of this, people already don't trust the pharma industry or govt. Can I blame them? Not really. At the same time, you have elderly refusing vaccination and dying because of this lack of trust. You have parents refusing to vaccinate children for things like measles

So tl;dr you have a system that has systematically eroded trust over the years and has been unable to self correct, and people on some level know that they're getting screwed. And you have an incompetent government that refuses to take responsibility for this lack of trust and only knows how to redirect blame elsewhere. What could possibly go wrong here?

edit: I'm not saying that the government is irredeemably bad, I'm saying that as of right now the current generation of politicians have failed to do their due diligence regarding pharma screwing people over (e.g. price of insulin)