What is the link between political authoritarianism and COVID-19 denial?

The convenience store connected to my building was bought by the richest man in a town of 30,000 who therefore believes he is the ruler and potentate of all he surveys. He tore the convenience store down without bothering to even give me notice, despite the fact that we share a common roof and ceiling beams, ripping out my phone and Internet as he did so.

When I complained to him about it, he told me to sell him my building on the spot, and that “I’ll buy this whole fucking town.” When I told him and his construction crew that they’d ripped out my phone and Internet, they said it shouldn’t have been connected to their roof. When I explained that I have serious, life-threatening health problems and can bleed to death from a nosebleed and therefore can’t go without a phone (and that there isn’t even a payphone in the tiny town in which I live to call for repairs) the response I got was, “That sounds like a ‘you’ problem.”

Subsequently they have repeatedly violated a pandemic no-construction order, despite my calls to bylaw enforcement about their activities. They don’t even wear facemasks, and laugh when they see me wearing one. I have asthma, diabetes, and am recovering from a bilateral pulmonary embolism; if I get COVID-19, I will die.

From what I see in the news, this isn’t unusual behaviour for the politically reactionary, and I am wracking my brain trying to figure out what the connection is. Maybe they don’t value my life, but do they not value their own? Do they really believe they are at no risk from a virulent disease which has killed tens of thousands?

As I write this, they’re out there right now doing construction again (on the weekend so as to avoid bylaw enforcement I assume).