What I don't get is why some people believe the government is the one that decide what is the appropriate individual response to the pandemic. It's paradoxical to believe the government knows better than its voters.
It sounds like you think our system of government is a democracy. It's not, it's a republic. Voters do not make our governance decisions, they vest the power to make those decisions in leaders that they elect.
So no, that is not paradoxical, it is a feature of our system of government, and a very important one in my view.
A republic is not a system by the which the voter is losing power but one that keeps the government in check as well as the will of the majority against a minority.
It is not a system or an excuse to do things against the voters individual interest.
In the US it is, literally, a system where voters have direct power only in elections every few years, and only the indirect power of influence in the interim. Voters do not run the government, in a very real way. They merely elect the people who do. Those people are then free to use their own judgement, hopefully, but not inevitably, informed by their constituents' wishes.
You can debate whether this is better than direct democracy (I think it is), but it is just the case that this is how our system works and how it was designed to work.
I think you are confusing the implementation with the spirit. If the government does not do what they were voted for they are simply an illegitimate government and subject to be disobeyed. The fact that no administration was voted on their public health policy means almost anything they do is against their voter's interest, so they should do as little as possible.
No, seriously, representative government is both the spirit and the implementation! Go read the treatises that underpin the design of the system. They had this debate and came down on the side of vesting all the power in representatives, rather than directly in the people.
You seem to disagree with where they landed on this question. That's fine and great, you're entitled to your opinion and dissenting voices are important. But our system simply was not designed to place power directly in the hands of the masses, not even in spirit.
Are we talking circles around each other? Are you talking about how you think it should work? I'm talking about how it was designed to work, which remains closer to how it does work in practice than what you are describing.
And one of the reasons it was designed this way is right there in your comment: the government should not be unable to respond to new questions awaiting a vote on those questions by the electorate. The voters are instead expected to elect people they trust to act with good judgement when such new questions come up, and to boot out people whose judgement was shown to be unsound, the next time they have a chance. This is one of a number of reasons I prefer our system to the direct democracy you seem to be advocating.
