If the institutions were functioning properly it wouldn't matter what antivaxxers think. There would have been effective track and trace within weeks of the initial intelligence reports from the US department of Defense in November of 2019. Moreover consumer and non-essential industry air travel would have been halted until covid was wholly contained. Quarantines would have been enforced, sanitation measures would have been taken at all ports of entry for people and freight. Disinformation warfare would have been snuffed out and the corporations and state actors sabotaging our culture would have persecuted or otherwise combatted.
Instead the CDC has spent the past 2 and a half years changing its story and outright spreading disinformation itself on multiple occasions as it has been turned into a political tool, not a scientific organization. It's not just the antivaxxers, there are systemic political and economic problems underlying the structure of western "democracies" and the CDC's absolute dysfunction, along with the dysfunction of many countries public health authorities, is a symptom of those underlying systemic problems.
The order of events as I remember it in the US in terms of government and institutional narrative.
"COVID is a public health emergency but don't panic. Also if you have covid symptoms the health infrastructure may gaslight you for a while until we fully recognize the threat, like it does with monkeypox victims today."
"Don't panic but we need to social distance for a few weeks, the virus is airborne and spreads on surfaces, wear a mask and limit interaction to your family unit unless you are essential personal."
"Keep wearing a mask but we're not going to enforce social distancing at all."
"We're working on a vaccine, we'll have to wear masks until the vaccine is deployed, but we won't effectively enforce mask wearing at all."
"The vaccine is here, until enough people take it we still have to mask."
"The vaccine is working, covid is disappearing, this will surely be the last wave, soon everything can go back to normal."
"We won America, covid is barely spreading and over half the country is vaccinated, feel free to take your masks off."
"Covid is spreading but we aren't going to do anything more than what we're already doing, wear a mask if you want to. Also, you only have to quarantine for 5 days now even though the scientific community knows that covid's incubation period can range from a few days all the way to 20+ days in outlier cases"
"Covid is spreading and causing long covid, vaccination doesn't protect against long covid in all cases, or even most cases upon subsequent infection, we don't care at all, no public health measures will be taken. Also, covid may or may not even spread on surfaces."
"Healthcare workers can come into work with covid if they are asymptomatic, if they are symptomatic they are expected to return to work as soon as they are feeling better."
"No one quarantines anymore, no one cares, we don't either, **** you"