Print article In April, the deadliest month of the pandemic, an elderly New Yorker in assisted living couldn’t grasp why she was suddenly forbidden to see her friends. In May, two sisters in Michigan, one Republican and the other a Democrat, watched their aged parents suffer from covid-19 and wondered why so many people refused to cover their faces against the virus. In Florida in October, with 200,000 Americans already dead, a strong young man questioned how dire - how real - the whole crisis was. In wintry South Dakota last month, as the coronavirus hit home with an icy clarity, a man who understood the risk chose not to wear a mask. He just didn’t like being told what to do, his family said.