I think it's important to clarify for liberals, who think it's a conspiracy theory: no one is saying the Illuminati had a secret blood oath meeting and decided to do this. But humans are tribal, and will fiercely protect their ideology. When the virus hit, the left knew the effects of a "damaging" virus would benefit their goals. So they were all too happy to play along that it was worse than it is, and once it entered the public discourse, every leftist became complicit with it's propagation, which was easy since the left controls every major media outlet.

Because deep down, they knew what a bad virus meant, it meant closing the economy. And they don't care because a closed economy benefits their end goals.