> So now it's not about the virus at all. It's about following orders, doing what you're told > - James Cole, 12 Monkeys (1995) The underlying mechanisms are a bit more complicated, but basically boil down to how an authoritarian state is created. Such a state can be created without the need for explicit violence (which induces fear in the populous), by inducing fear in another way. The fear must be of an external threat, an "other", from whom the populous must be kept "safe", and only the state is able to provide that safety. The "other" can be truly external, such as a foreign invader, or even extra-terrestrials might work, or an existential threat such as "climate change", or it could be an internal threat, in this case the "unvaccinated" were converted into the "other" that was to be feared. The masks were an integral part of the "fear theatre". If people were just walking around looking and sounding normal, they weren't dropping dead in the streets, pretty soon the population would twig to the realization that the situation wasn't really that serious. However, if you force everyone to wear masks, that provides a strong visual reinforcement that something is happening, something that isn't normal, something that the government has told you to fear. It could be anywhere! TL;DR; Fear is the mechanism of control in technocratic authoritarianism.