(Sorry GP) asked a personal opinion question and I offered one —
My gut feeling tells me this pandemic is suffering from a similar phenomenon in user interface latency. The research shows that if the latency is under a few hundred milliseconds, we believe that we are in control of the device and our cause and effect matters. However, if the latency is longer than some hundred millisecond mark, we think the device is under someone else’s control and that our cause has no effect on the system — though in fact, it is the direct cause.
To me, a pandemic kinda follows the same thought — if the disease isn’t having a direct, somewhat immediate effect (intuition says a couple days) to our actions, then it’s hard to issue broad, population level behavioral change that comes with direct costs to life and property - it’s just beyond the timeline for us to accept our actions (not wearing a mask or not distancing) as meaningful inputs to the pandemic system.
Personal opinion: I have no trouble wearing a mask even after having covid, but the current gov’t approach is 100% not the way I’d approach this issue. I would approach the mask mandates and business shutdowns this way only if the disease symptoms were severely impacting (so that’s my symptom description with walking a block) a large set of the population (so that’s the 30%, no age brackets needed) — and to me, that number is about 1 in 3. Now the counterpoint to this, is that if there is a tipping point in the proposed pandemic that once it gets to a certain spread, it becomes that 1 in 3 statistic - but I digress, you get the point I believe.
Edit: to tie this all together — there’s a lot of talk about increased sanctions from this new variant — but if the severity of symptoms do not change, only the transmissibility - it is a dangerous seed to sow amongst an already incredulous population.