I think the discussions about the spread of lying and information breakdowns in any authoritarianism is spot on, its one of the things that the free market side in the calculation debate between cold warriors like Hayek and Lucas got right. I've seen it in a much more micro level too and its present in any society, any firm, of any size (part of the reason that I think the older capitalism vs. socialism arguments are all completely bunk, all of them that dont examine that angle carefully).
However, while there's a lot of things which happen by accident, there's plenty of people who will exploit accidents any way they can.
The so called "shock doctrine" of capitalism is based upon that, the takers rather than makers model of predatory capitalism is based on it, those trends have been around for a time before any pandemic.
That "vicious streak" in business, that "winner take all" idea, has its corollaries in other bad ideas which some quarters are working hard to revive, like social darwinism, malthusianism etc. and I definitely, definitely believe that accounts for the "too little, too late" model of conservatism.
There was that idea of a "window" some time ago, during which the far right thought people were warming to their ideas and a true picture of who they where, that is something more like unreconstructed nazis. I cant help but think that besides that there is another "window" in which, maybe for the same reasons, maybe not, when politicians, greedy elites, will seek to exploit crisis to do things they could in good conscience, or rather with public witness, do. Such as ramping up neglect, resulting in deaths, then behaving blameless in it all.