It's not always a primary purpose of distraction, tptb are always up to some evil shit which can make it seem like the purpose is always distraction, but over 90% of the population doesn't even require distraction, because they don't want to know, they distract themselves of their own volition, because they want to be distracted and not worry about things, if anything, feigning a need for distraction is unto itself a manipulation tactic as it gives the few people actually paying attention the false impression that "if the npcs find out / wake up, THEN it's game over for tptb" but no, tptb can do whatever the hell they want quite brazenly and the general masses go along with it, but all of this said, covid was a lot of things at once to a lot of different people, aspects ranged from economical to police state to test running to population culling and more, the one real takeaway here is that a LOT of people conspired together on this one, which is unusual, tptb typically operate like rival gangs