The captains of industry are paying huge sums to seed this misinformation: https://www.dailyposter.com/how-the-koch-network-hijacked-the-war-on-covid/ This pandemic is eating into their profits, and a few million more dead plebs is better for their bottom line than any public health measures to save them. It shouldn't come as a surprise that fossil fuel companies have a hand in this; they have decades of practice of poisoning the well of public debate on settled science.
It's a wedge issue too, it's used to split the population down idiologicical lines, if the population is spilt it's harder for other issues to gain traction. So whilst covid may not matter as much to their profits, the move away from fossil fuels will. Wedge issue - Wikipedia.
"divide and conquer" I don't recall, but think it was a Roman saying? (Cesar maybe) As true today as ever. Look at Brexit also, if there was a way to distract the nation from anything else
