The reason there was no room for intelligent debate on exactly where to draw the line on COVID policy is because the space was absolutely flooded with public figures turning a highly contagious, deadly pandemic into an idiotic political debate and going to COVID parties for fucking fun while hospitals didn’t have enough beds to treat people.

Yes, sometimes in an actual emergency, the government needs to take command to keep people from dying. It’s the same premise as setting up roadblocks and making highways single direction evacuation routes during a hurricane, just on a longer timescale because way more jackasses decided it would be fun not to take very basic precautions. Sometimes, there aren’t two legitimately valid sides.