You can do some reading about the Bay Area and debates over whether government policies are in bad faith. I think it’s at least arguable that some are in fact in bad faith (meaning, no one really thinks they’ll serve any public purpose other than punishing groups of people).
The policy, not the global, some times lethal, pandemic.
The policy made people not want you near them.
My belief is that they were collectively responding to an uncertain, rapidly changing situation, were incentivized to be very conservative given the early experience in Italy, didn't adjust their approach sufficiently when new information revised the case fatality rate downward, and did a poor job overall of balancing the broad spectrum of risks and costs. I don't think any of these mistakes were intentional. And none of us, including those who criticize these policies in hindsight, really know what would have happened had the policies been more lax, especially early on.
Here there was never an outdoor mask policy, so I didn't ever have a chance to evaluate my reaction to such a thing. There was apparently a policy banning stores like Walmart from selling seeds (which I interpreted as bureaucratic friction rather than intention, something that was born out relatively quickly in practice, and never in the minds of the reactionaries).