They screwed this up by being dishonest. They thought "the noble lie" was worth , but all it did was cause nothing but suspicion about EVERYTHING,
1) the constant moving of the goal posts.
2) the constant focus on + test over hospitalizations & deaths.
3) the lack of focus on the people that were REALLY at risk of death and serious complications (old, obese, health compromised.)
4) "covid theater"- paper and cloth masks, putting up plastic shields, arbitrary social distancing numbers.
5) Politicians hypocrisy... too many "leaders" imposing mask mandates, fines for masks, shutting down this business but leaving that one open... then in their personal lives they ignore all these "life saving" guidelines they made the rest of us live under.
People eventually figure out they've been lied to, and then they don't believe anything you have to say. So when the vaccines did showed up C19 skepticism was already at a boiling point.