Bad headline: Covid didn't do that, grifters exploiting covid did that.

The saying "never let a good crisis go to waste" applies here.

In times of crisis, such as a pandemic, people are looking for reassurance, people to blame, or both. That's the ideal time for grifters to swindle them, whether for money, power, political support or more than one of the above.

Fascism has always risen from times of intense hardship and ineffective to nonexistent opposition to disinformation and those that spread it.

From Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler in the first half of the 20th century, to Orban, Putin, and Trump today, that's how you get fascism.