alt Hacker News> Covid authoritarian policies were hugely successful and supported by mainstream people by and large.
They were temporary and saved lives. Keyword here is temporary.
Of course COVID denialists are angry at it but they won in the USA now so we'll be happy getting more deaths and disabilities now that they are removing our ability to vaccinate ourselves.
Being temporary and being authoritarian are entirely orthogonal. In general I would imagine that cultures willing to accept temporary authoritarianism for the "right reasons" are more prone to falling to dictators.