If we were dealing with some kind of hemorrhagic fever that spread like wildfire through all cross-sections of the population, sending dying people lurching into the street within a few hours of infection, moaning and bleeding from their eyes, there would be no controversy.
We wouldn't have antivaxxers making up all kinds of ridiculous reasons to avoid the shot, we wouldn't have state governors suing the President or vice versa, and we wouldn't think twice about yanking the broadcast licenses of any Fox or Sinclair affiliates who spread misinformation or otherwise spewed propaganda against best public health practices. We would have something to unite against, rather than something to further divide us.
But that's not what happened. The bug is bad but not that bad. It "almost never" kills children, it targets "old" or "fat" people disproportionately, and it "only" kills about 1% of patients. It is bad enough to bring out the worst differences among us, but not bad enough to make us set those differences aside.
If an enemy nation sent troops to our shores with orders to kill even 0.1% of our population, we'd all rise up to defeat them... but somehow a virus is different. The virus gets a free pass from 30%-40% of our population which is strongly (but admittedly not exclusively) correlated with a specific political party.
Makes no sense, but then, not much does these days.