I think some if it is that it is an appealing contrarian take, and even as stark as things are, it is common to not have suffered much personal impact from infections (either direct consequences or severe illness/death of friends/relatives).

I'm not terribly well connected socially so I don't take it as a universal, but the people I've heard about having it are a single friend of a friend and my doctor's husband (she volunteered the info during a routine appointment).

So the responses are more visible in peoples minds than the pandemic, and they are thinking intuitively about it, not reasoning about the precarious situation that (pretty much continuously) exists with such a fast spreading infection.