Emotions can, and often do guide people to do stupidest decisions of their lives that will effectively ruin it, or even kill them. You can't reason with such a person. And getting through the firewall of those emotions, for somebody often on the opposite side of the argument is practically impossible. I suspect IQ level plays a role too (critical thinking not only towards the world but also oneself).

The more you push, the more resistance there is. Doesn't matter how right you are and how wrong they are.

What covid highlighted like thermonuclear blast is how many people in general population are weird, naive, paranoid and basically... dumb, for the lack of better words. Also how internet amplifies the good and the bad equally.

200 years ago it would be just some random quiet weird dude that you don't have desire to talk to, today its a self-proclaimed patriot who thinks got the ultimate truth in contrary to general population. In their own echo chambers, this spirals into some pretty weird crowd mechanics.

There is no win of argument. There is no going back. In this regard we moved a bit back to the middle ages. And yes, politicians fucked up pretty big time, almost every single one.