This tells you a lot about Lenovo's engineering.

They fail to develop a reliable webcam indicator, and patch that with some half-assed attempt at physical view obstruction. The whole approach is a demonstration of bad engineering and unreliability. And that's just the part that became public.

I think that its easier to compare the shutter to airplane windows.

The windows are there just to make the humans inside more comfortable, similar to how many people would be more comfortable without a camera pointed at them.

Flashing firmware is a big hill to climb for bad guys in most peoples worlds.