The people you are defending lied to us. I don’t care how educated they are, they are liars.
So, the entire infectious disease community consisting of thousands of experts representing multiple scientific disciplines all got together to develop a lie and they did it so well that they all tell a consistent story.
That's not very plausible, but whatever.
What *is* plausible is that a handful of malicious kooks coordinated to spread misinformation for the purpose of increasing the number of Covid deaths and making sure this virus becomes endemic and continues to kill people. Since these kooks have always existed, this is the explanation that I accept.