If the story is true, good. Facts without a story lose against stories without facts.
That’s why populism is so successful.
If facts would matter Trump would be president.
The facts were all known beforehand and are now, but many don’t care about facts.
People aren’t as rational as myths like the homo economicus try to make us believe.
Just look at ads. They sell emotions not facts.
> Against that shifting phantasmagoric world in which black may be white tomorrow and yesterday’s weather can be changed by decree, there are in reality only two safeguards. One is that however much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back, and you consequently can’t violate it in ways that impair military efficiency. The other is that so long as some parts of the earth remain unconquered, the liberal tradition can be kept alive.
[0]: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Or consider a century earlier, in world war one we poured humans into literal meat grinders with the belief that maybe today, if we just poured enough in, it would make a difference. Despite the obvious evidence to the contrary for days, weeks, and months prior. One need not read much history to see that people will care about a story they have accepted long past the point their senses tell them otherwise. They will claim they are freezing while the flames lick their very feet.
Other official facts of the time period included 1. standing in a restaurant without a mask on is almost terrorism and 2. sitting at a restaurant without a mask on is fine.
Recommendations, regulations, and responses to the pandemic as it happened are factual in the sense that they happened, but are not "facts" in the same way. It is not a fact that standing in a restaurant without a mask was terrorism and sitting was fine. Instead, given the information available at the time, and the practical requirement to have your mask off to eat, this policy was chosen for a time as a risk mitigation balanced with practical requirements. The appropriateness of this policy is a matter of opinion.