Everyone was affected by the pandemic. Red state, blue state, service worker or constant zoom meetings, everyone was impacted. Local government, personal political views, socioeconomic status and everything else had an impact on how people experienced the pandemic and for how long (in some places things went back to more-or-less normal sooner), but there's no question that the entire world felt the impact intensely.
I think the thing that matters is how people perceive it now. If the US went through another epidemic with a similar mortality rate, I think that there would be greater resistance to masking. I think that people would compare it to Covid-19, say "we already did this once," and just skip it.
