Yes, the great four lies. You could add "It's mild" as the quinta essenza, to top them all.

I know this is a fruitless academic debate, but the core problem, in my opinion, is that we were stupid enough to let COVID become a partisan issue. We, the public, played along all the time. COVID indeed is a political problem by default (in terms of needing to be solved by correct policies), but it should never be an "us vs. them" kind of problem on any level, not partisan and certainly not national. Bref; we fucked up.