There was too much pushback against covid. The idea was to get people to live in perpetual fear, to put all their trust in 'the experts' and obey everything they're told. Once pandemic lockdowns were normalized, they'd move onto climate lockdowns. That didn't pan out, hell they couldn't even get people to switch to fake meat and electric cars. So now they have to ease up on their agenda to turn humanity into one big insect hive for now, before they provoke organized resistance.