Most democraties have provisions for times of exceptional needs and counterpowers against that. Of course that's a weakness but a weakness that's judged better than mass deaths or complete fall of the country.
Those have to be limited in time and regularly subjected to control by democratically-elected institutions (actually vote to see if extended or not).
I completely agree of course. My reply was simply because I think it's important not to inadvertently conflate things, particularly when the issue is contentious. In this case the concepts of authoritarian and permanency, as well as the concepts of people who deny COVID, people who distrust vaccines, and people who were dissatisfied with the various government mandates.
Granted there is quite a bit of overlap among the latter trio.
Those have to be limited in time and regularly subjected to control by democratically-elected institutions (actually vote to see if extended or not).