The CECC went to great lengths to promote themselves as miracle-working technocrats, effortlessly bending nature to their whim via the magic of yellow tape and plastic barriers, and probably started believing their own BS. A compliant, fearmongering media acted as kingmakers, and our representatives and lawmakers went along with it all (most likely because they knew the CECC would take the heat when it all blew up - evading blame is a national pastime). Anyone raising objections was constrained by emergency powers and censorship (same as everywhere else, of course).
As for why people are ignoring deadly serious global and national issues and focusing instead on a largely-unimportant virus, there’s a whole thread about that (which nobody reads):