I think maybe you have the benefit of hindsight, but even so your argument is perhaps unfounded.
First, I think it's worth pointing out that, for the most part [1],politicians operated in good faith, trying to balance multiple factors. There were a variety of strategies persued by different countries [2],and its somewhat unclear which was actually best in the long run. Social scientists will be dissecting the long term effects for decades.
Finally, the overall outcomes have been exceptionally mild. Globally a very large absolute number of people died. But as a fraction of total population it was tiny. A vaccine was developed, and distributed, such that everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been, probably many times.
Finally I don't think people would have responded any better to technocrats than politicians. Technocrats are not good at guiding large population groups, and are mistrusted by many.
In truth we still don't know which approach was (long term) the best, or even what the "best" ultimately means.
[1] the event itself was unprecedented in living memory, and there was no relevant historical data to lean on. Experts were consulted, only to get lots of speculation and varying opinions. In truth experts had very limited data to work with and most would have preferred a lot more data before making recommendations.
[2] Some countries had simple border structures (new Zealand) and could persure a total-close approach. Some had national lock downs, some had no lockdown (Sweden).
Overall though it seems outcomes were better in places where populations had a high degree of trust in their authority structures. Places like the USA with high volumes of distrust fared the worst. Changing the authority would not have changed that mistrust.
In some countries politicians erred on the side of safety - at the expense of the economy, in others maintaining personal freedoms, at the expense of a few deaths, was the primary goal. Which makes sense. Personal freedom advocates have never minded other people dying to maintain those freedoms. And the overall death rate was low enough that there was no real mass-fear of death coming to me.