I identified with so much of this, thanks for posting.
To me the covid issue is part of something much bigger, an even bigger hyperobject, which I think is what you described in your passage about equations and missing data.
Covid is a symptom of an energy problem affecting us globally, as are also the weather related droughts, fires, and storms, and even financial inflation.
My usual bag, to make money is as a systems Engineer. I have been finding more an more reason to be using those skills gained in industry to work voluntarily towards fixing this energy problem that I've seen coming for about 7 years, since beginning studying as a PhD candidate on a related subject.
Indeed we might be seeing there are two distinct modes of stakeholder behaviour becoming apparent, the psychotic delusion that everything is just fine, and woe betide anyone daring to say otherwise, and those daring to say otherwise such as your good self.
I had a very scary physical experience at the hands of a relative at the new year, which made me realise how dangerous the psychotic mindset is, and this is with me already experienced on how to manage the mental disorder of others, growing up with my mother officially diagnosed as schizophrenic, all of my earlier life until adulthood.
Psychosis, is far more dangerous than schizophrenia, imho.
It inspired my to write a piece, shortly afterwards - I did my best to empathise with those affected, so it doesn't communicate the full depth of my experience, which I really could not give in public, out of respect for my family.
I think you see things as I do, most people are agents. We all have a capability for this, but it is up to us to manage it in ourselves.
Telling folk who are going bankrupt, due to energy bill hikes, to just turn off their heating in the middle of winter is literally begging them to just die. This is what we were being brow-beaten with daily on our mainstream news in UK. Telling nurses, or other key workers who are going without food, to keep getting to work, despite going bankrupt, is more of the same.
Crowing in triumph about the Chinese now seeing tens of thousands lost to covid, after opening up their lockdown, which was the first implemented, and which actually worked, eliminating covid, now failing because the rest of the world failed to follow suit, is more of the same, more evil people celebrating more death, in this case from covid, which could have been avoided, had we worked in collaboration.
We are literally begging and assisting our own species to die, it seems to me, and this comes down to a very personal individual level when it comes to personal disagreements between formerly close loved ones, some of whom have become dangerously psychotic.
https://eric-bott.medium.com/a-new-years-resolution-for-agents-c28d7b02924
