Good point. I think what the men you are referring to have in common with the less educated men Deaton and Case studied is that both groups have a deep distrust of mainstream institutions like the government, corporate America, the media, and academia.

My argument is that this distrust leads to riskier behavior, but I’m sure that’s not the whole story. Human beings are always seeking to justify our choices to ourselves and to each other. So I think at least part of the explanation for anti-vaccine and anti-mask sentiment is that it serves as a badge of tribal identity.

Social scientists talk about “costly signaling” as a way that members of a group identify one another. Refusing to wear a mask or get vaccinated is certainly costly in terms of the added risk one runs, and in the case of masks at least, not wearing one when most other people are is a pretty clear signal.

So ultimately maybe these two reasons are deeply related. After all, one would not feel the need to identify with a subculture that rejects mainstream institutions unless one felt deep distrust for those institutions already.