If the entire machine that pushed this pro-ukraine shit and all its propaganda and rehabilitating of nazis had been turned towards covid then there'd be no problem. You don't really need mandates, you just need the system to actually make an effort to get people to do it. Proper public propaganda to spread a positive collective message and effort to fight the virus together would work.

Only a half-hearted effort was ever put into stopping covid. I can't see how mandates can get anywhere, and anywhere with the political conditions to make mandates happen has the political conditions to make the better method happen anyway.