Americans were almost in danger of "the state" making them wear a piece of fabric over their face and they will never forgive anyone for it. Most of the whiners were never actually forced to do it they just wish they were. They'll also tell you how the entire country was shut down for weeks despite it never happening anywhere, even in very blue states. There was the magical time when, just for a few weeks, nobody cared about masks because the Koch media machine hadn't formed a proper stance on it yet. Then the libertarian brainworms kicked in and gave everyone a hot cultural issue to be mad about. Because letting the government tell people to wear masks could lead to telling multi-billion dollar corporations to do stuff. Every public solution must be opposed at every level, no matter how benign because any quarter given is weakness.