On tv shows and in movies:
No masks, social distancing or even conversation about covid (generally).
In Reality:
Masks, social distancing and non-stop conversation about covid (generally).
Reality and illusion first merged then separated. Hollywood is now real life and reality is hollywood.
Simultaneously the metaverse is a massive and rapidly emerging industry.
While people argue and go nuts, they are creating a virtual, alternative reality right under our nose.
FAANG (Facebook Amazon Apple Google), went insane releasing everything they could as fast as they could for home entertainment the second covid dropped. They create these non-covid reality movies and shows to get you addicted to seeing people like people used to be. Right on your screen. So when you step outside you assume a mask less, jab less world is an illusion on the screen, not reality.
Even before the whole China virus nonsense, the people that were obsessed with TV and movies treated media as a higher priority than life. What they see on TV means more to them than their real life. They're able to live vicariously through the lives of fictional characters so they disregard their own life. It's escapism taken to the extreme.
If TV and movies were to show fictional characters as conforming with all this mask/lockdown/THE VARUS bull then those media-obsessed people would have nowhere left to turn and would begin to rebel again the systems perpetuating those behaviors since their escapism would have been taken away. So the networks and movie studios keep it up so that people remain drugged and lazy. They continue to lose their zeal for life while paying these studios for more and more of their drug of entertainment.