[regularfry]

> What’s the counterweight to keep the system in check and from growing out of control? If the only message is yes, it sets up a positive feedback loop.

Nice try, but that's begging the question. Why is it a problem for the government employees to do their jobs and for the courts to enforce the law?

> Looking back and guessing whether Covid justifies it is post hoc rationalization.

So is making an accusation of rampant fraud that just happened to coincide with a badly-contained pandemic. Occam's Razor makes increased sickness the null hypothesis. It's on you to do more than raise vague insinuations if you want to show the main weight of the problem here is anything other than that, with the usual derisory level of fraud at the edges as a rounding error.

> It says nothing about the validity of individual claims.

Let me introduce you to a concept you may find useful: go and read up on this thing called "statistics", you might find it helps.

> Fraud schemes in the same timeframe could benefit just as well

And? Show they're the problem. Show them increasing. Show why they started increasing exactly then.