I think a large part of why I’m so frustrated by the “well, nobody else is bothering with having a mask mandate, so there’s no point” argument is that we’re living through a real-world, literal version of the old parental peer-pressure cliché of “if everybody else jumped off a bridge, would you?”
As kids, it’s such an obviously mockable cliché, because of course not. Jumping off a bridge is an obviously life-threatening activity, so first off, that’s not something that a lot of people would do, and secondly, I sure wouldn’t be so foolish as to do that.
And yet. Here we are. With society at large jumping off every bridge around, and people lining up to jump with them.
Only it’s worse than that, because jumping off the bridge is a solo action that only threatens the life of the person jumping. But refusing to mask or encourage others to mask means that the jumpers are grabbing those next to them and pulling them over the edge of the bridge as they jump.
And here we are.