I suspect that some things may be ultimately unknowable. But we might also well conclude that some behaviors that a lot of people feel very strongly about don't really seem to have mattered much.
Look how things have changed since even early March. I was at my last in-person tech event at the beginning of March, a few hundred people, and lots of care was being given to not shaking hands and wiping down surfaces but there wasn't so much as a thought of distancing or mask wearing (and who knows how important those things will turn out to be either).
In another comment I mention one piece of research indicating that overall our non-pharmaceutical interventions didn't do much of anything other than small short term effects. There's a fair bit of data showing that while people feel good about masks and social distancing, it doesn't appear to affect the pandemic. However, more focused efforts like protecting nursing homes could've saved half the lives lost in this pandemic (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/baltimore-nursing-home-...). But it generally takes well trained professionals to do it consistently enough, IMHO.
Look how things have changed since even early March. I was at my last in-person tech event at the beginning of March, a few hundred people, and lots of care was being given to not shaking hands and wiping down surfaces but there wasn't so much as a thought of distancing or mask wearing (and who knows how important those things will turn out to be either).