My opinion is that politicians left, right, communist and capitalist botched the whole thing.
Politicians in general overreacted, ignored, underreacted, covered up, ignored science, ignored common sense because science didn't back it up, waited on science, and we still lack educating the public for what masks really do. All the shut downs were intended to slow the virus, but my own state didn't take that time to add ICU beds and now they are full again. At the start the government educating people and discouraging people to wear masks (out of fear of no masks for those on the first time not having a mask), I thought that one would be an easy one.
Most of the stimulus money was a big money grab. Certain industries were shut down that didn't need to be, others were left unchecked and their employees suffered due to lack of regulation.
In my opinion, who are those hundreds of political leaders, just about all of them. Thousands might be a better number.
Just a minor point, the science was always there for masks, and many other things such as airborne virus transmission of other types of coronaviruses. You can look up the research journals and even the CDCs own material pre-COVID. Politics has been polluting the objectivity of science, and even WHO advice, by making a string of logically fallacious statements, one after another, that fail the rules of basic informal logical, let alone scientific scrutiny.
Next time you hear a political or a health authority utter the words "we have no evidence that...", listen to what follows. They used that argument to suggest that masks weren't needed by the public, and people were safe from airborne viral transmission! A lack of evidence doesn't mean anything more than "we don't know", so we can't conclude that something is safe or unsafe, works or doesn't, exists or doesn't exist! This logical fallacy is called
argumentum ad ignorantiam or the argument from ignorance.
Expect more of this, because science constantly revises its understanding when new information comes in, while politics is invested in unquestionable dogma!
Back to the original topic, using the same argument, without evidence, we can't say whether certain cameras or lenses will be dropped, put on hold or just be delayed, all we can do is speculate based on limited evidence from rumour sources!
It would be a mistake to assume that every internal product release plan is set in stone. Canon can always reassess the changing market, and decide whether certain products or product lines are no longer viable or profitable.