This made me recall an article I read very early in the pandemic. Just found it, and it's a real time capsule: "It’s hard to accept these sudden recommended changes to our routines, and the open-endedness is horrifying—or even worse, the prospect that this could be the new normal, at least until a vaccine is developed." Ahahahahahaha. But the relevant section:

Susan Joslyn, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, studies people’s responses to weather forecasting and finds that “false alarms” in major weather events, like tornado warnings or hurricane evacuations, result in a loss of trust. If you evacuate five times and nothing happens, you might believe the forecasts mean nothing; if you socially distance for two months and the virus never reaches your town, you might believe it was a false alarm, too, even if that social distancing is what kept the virus from taking hold. The same holds true with focusing on the worst-case scenario.

But she goes on to talk about how officials know this, and know how to mitigate it. Well, at one time they did. Now they've given up on that along with any semblance of public health.