may be they are suffering from cognitive dissonance, and this is how they resolve their internal conflict - that it must be a hoax and covid false, because the lockdown is so much worse for them.
It’s not about internal conflict, it’s about a pipe dream where it all goes away.
And on a practical level I would think many people would prefer a double-digit probability of dying from COVID while working rather than a few years spent in financial limbo due to lockdowns. So at this point COVID being a hoax becomes way less black-and-white: maybe it being a hoax is just a way to say that “I would rather take the risk, and the hoax here is that you are vastly overestimating the fear of death in population”
PS: I am not saying it’s a hoax, I am giving a reasonably plausible pattern of thought behind the mechanism justifying it being a hoax.