Basically all people hate being lied to, or to feel manipulated or controlled.
A lot of people on the anti-mask train were totally on board for the '2 week lockdown' to flatten the curve. Those same people then saw their government officials repeatedly lie to them ("masks don't work!" ~ "Herd Immunity @ X%", etc), the media painted the picture of airborne ebola, and then those same politicians went out and violated their own lockdown orders.
Meanwhile, their local economy is destroyed and they or people they care about are suffering/struggling. And for those that take a more global view of things, there is some [0,1]evidence that supply chain disruption is killing more people than Covid itself.
It's easy to feel like those people are complete idiots and ruining it for everyone else. It's much harder, but much more valuable, to focus on solutions to the underlying problem. Ultimately, we need to restore trust in our institutions before we can begin to repair the divide.
[0]https://time.com/5864803/oxfam-hunger-covid-19/ [1]https://www.un.org/press/en/2020/ga12294.doc.htm
this immediately created 2 classes -- folks who will get their salaries from their professions inspite of the lockdowns and those who won't and would be left to suffer
In short, I think we're going to be in for massive long-term unemployment (and underemployment) coupled with inflation beyond what anyone living today in the US has experienced. I'm not too confident about the state of this nation's finances
[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/16/yelp-data-shows-60percent-of...
What most people (including me) do is this: we follow the law (in almost all cases) and we use our own subjective judgements to determine how to act besides that. This gets tricky because even if none of us breaks the law, our subjective judgements often differ. Some examples:
1. The law where I live says I need to wear a mask inside public places/stores, which I do happily.
2. I wear a mask when I'm outside and there's lots of people around, because according to my subjective judgement, this makes sense (the law does not require this).
3. I don't wear a mask when I'm outside and there aren't a lot of people around.
4. I don't wear a mask when I'm running along a trail.
5. I don't eat-in at restaurants, even though the law allows maskless, indoor dining.
What I find wrong about your comment is that you seem to be holding people accountable for not sharing the same subjective judgements as you. If I see people dining, maskless, inside a restaurant, I think "well, I wouldn't do that, but other people disagree". I don't categorize them as untrustworthy, bad people.