The shift in people's attitudes toward protective measures against COVID-19 over the past three and a half years really, really demonstrates how powerful propaganda can be.
It doesn't even take overt collusion or outright lying! The whole of capital will just determine where its best interests lie fairly organically, and then twist, omit, and rephrase their way into getting the desired behaviour out of their workforce!
It's. Fuck.
As I was getting on a bus the other day a man laughed at my mask and commented that it was well past the end of the pandemic. There's a fresh wave in the city I live in because of a festival which attracts people from all over the world and then puts them in badly-ventilated rooms for an hour at a time.
The worst thing about this is that it's so easy to wear a mask! Sure it's not as comfortable as not wearing one, but come the fuck on. We accidentally eliminated the most dangerous clade of the flu by doing this. Good ventilation and masking should be as much the norm as having clean, treated water and a sewage system.