It’s mostly well-meaning all the way down
ME: Society-level evil is almost always perpetrated by people 100% convinced that they are doing good.
THEM: Exactly!
ME:
THEM: …and they’re invariably being controlled by evil puppeteers.
ME:
THEM:
ME: I think you’re missing the point.
I think your take is too simplistic and in fact you seem to be the one purposefully missing the point.
There are trails of evidence showing that vaccine passports were planned before 2020. Also tevidence showing that the idea of lockdowns were not merely the hysterical reaction you claim but were gamed out. Look at the lockdown implemented in 2013 in Boston or the one in Africa for Ebola which was also promoted on Twitter by bots.
Do powerful people influence politicians? Yes and this is not a conspiracy. I think you're imagining people picturing a small evil cabal in charge of everything but I don't think anyone even suggests something akin to this scenario. However, there are people who stand to gain quite a bit of money from certain situations. They can either help bring those situations about via their influence or wait until a situation occurs and when it does, use their influence to manipulate events to better profit from it. Even Eric Holder said words to the effect, "Never let a crisis go to waste."
For instance, perhaps have bots spam Twitter showing how horrible the situation in Wuhan is or to promote the idea of lockdowns with faulty modeling and claims of success in China. These aren't conspiracy theories. We actually saw these events happen and that wouldn't be driven by hysteria but by intent to push an agenda.
You've previously mentioned the driver with the mask. Obviously the person is in a hysterical state. No one suggested that this person is being puppeteered to wear a mask alone in the car. You argue that no one put him there but himself. That's rather naive as what actually put him there was the fear porn he was continually exposed to and that was driven by media beholden to advertisers, politicians beholden to powerful interests and whoever promoted Ferguson's model rather than Michael Levitt's. Really not hard to fathom that powerful interests will use their influence to better their circumstances. Happens all the time.
Mark - if you had billions in resources, as wealthy as someone like Elon Musk are you honestly going to say you would not try and use that wealth to make the world a better place?