Covid doesn't infect people, it infects cells.
Charles Stross on our inner representation of Covid-19:
COVID19 infects human (and a few other mammalian species—mink, deer) cells: it doesn't recognize or directly interact with the superorganisms made of those cells.
By antropomorphising it and acting defiantly through mask or vaccination refusal, there's a will to be defiant in the face of some imaginary, sentient, enemy rather than the faceless, emotionless, little spiky blob it is.
People construct supernatural explanations for observed phenomena, and COVID19 is an observable phenomenon, so we get propitiatory or defiant/adversarial responses, not rational ones.