What would be the purpose of lying about it? Did it benefit our governments to put everyone in lockdown? I honestly don't know. I don't know much about economics. I suspect it only furthered the distance between the rich and poor and some of the rich definitely made sure they benefited from it.
But- what is the conspiracy here? Do you suspect something dodgy about the vaccines? Do you think it was economically motivated? Do you think it gave our governments more powers to control/monitor us? Track and trace and all that? Paranoia and threat are very good tools to make a population subservient.
Personally, I wouldn't put anyting past our governments. But, I do believe it was real. I suspect it was around a lot longer than the reported outbreak. My parents caught something really nasty around the Christmas time before from someone who had just been on a cruise holiday. It bore very similar symptoms and they said it was like nothing they'd ever experienced.
Someone I worked with was very in to the whole conspiracy thing. They used to call it 'co-fib'. They didn't get vaccinated- obviously, which I don't really blame them being suspicious of. Still- they got it eventually. I fairly meanly changed the subject though. I felt like- you can't really complain about something you've been saying doesn't exist for so long!