No, it didn’t turn people into lazy bums.
It just pulled back the curtain and revealed what was already there.
Absolutely correct.
The office was filled with "look-busy" nonsense. Meetings were for incompetent staff to hide behind other employees' work. Senior staff could hide their ignorance from junior staff. In-person work was pushing things around for days to weeks instead of just getting it done. I have incompetent coworkers now and have had coworkers previously who've had almost all their work done by others.
Remote work exposed it all. It showed who had skills and who didn't. The time stamps on shared documents showed exactly who was holding up the processes.
One person creating a document for others to review saved countless days instead of meeting after meeting to get to the point the talented ones already knew.
The American worker isn't lazy; they're just unwilling to go back to that nonsense.