I heard a pretty good explanation about how Covid broke people's brains. It went a bit like this:

If you measure anxiety on a scale of 1-10, you and I may walk around on any given day with a base level of 1-3 or so, and when Covid hit, we may have had moments when we went to 5 or 6, but then came back down to our usual level and were able to think straight

However, there are a lot of people out there who's baseline is high, who are anxious by default, and who barely keep it together on a good day - the 6's and 7's -and when covid came they went to 10+ and never came back

I accept this explanation. Lot of people have high trait neuroticism and covid put them over the edge and they will never come back. You see them now mainly at airports - and you can really tell; the weirdos wearing N95's but under their noses, who only put their masks on AFTER security, who put their masks on only when the plane is in the air (but not on the ground), who still mask their kids. Overwhelmingly these are younger people. I am speaking from 1st hand experience now. The contrast could not be more stark on Sunday when I flew out of Barcelona and was waiting in the lounge - an elderly British couple, clearly at least in their 70's, having a beer, smiling, chatting, making conversation with me and others, and this odd German couple, maybe in their 30's, FFP2 masks glued to their faces, eyes darting around, that vague look of panic... hard to explain.

I am in general agreement with Eugyppius, that we are more victims of human cowardice, stupidity, and banality than some super genius evil masterminds bent on taking over the world.