Adding to this is that we lost a great deal of capability of large scale coordination that we need to fight such diseases, compared to say 60 years ago. We eradicated smallpox, and completely suppressed measles and polio in most of the world. We rid Europe and the US of malaria. We had multiple chanches to stop covid: right in the beginning of course, but also in the summer of 2020 when the incidence numbers were suppressed to single digits per 100000, at least in most of Europe.
(Corona viruses are actually well suited to eradication because of something called overdispersion: A majority of people are effectively not contagious at all, whereas very few people cause a large number of infections. That means the numbers go down very quicky with social distancing or by partitioning the population, and once they are low enough you can do contact tracing and catch the remaining cases.)
Instead of being enthusiastic about doing something for their own health (and maybe enjoying two or three weeks of work from home or paid vacation which would have solved the problem at one point), people turned wearing masks into a ridiculous political issue.