I would draw a comparison with the computing industries Y2K project, to find and fix all of the dodgy software that would have broken when the millennium rolled over. Given the amazing efforts and how seriously it was taken, there were very few reported problems, or failures with critical infrastructure.
However, the general response afterwards was to see it as a massive cost with little benefit 'because nothing went wrong'. It's hard to describe how dumb such a response was, but that's unfortunately the level of critical thinking in the mass population.
You see the same with any successful project. COVID response, let's face it, was not exactly stellar, but given the dubious starting point of the government, people *did* pull together, and the vaccine programme *was* successful.