We, as the general public, are inherently selfish. If we don’t have symptoms, we don’t see the point in applying restrictions in our daily lives, be it wearing face coverings, distancing or otherwise.
This is why from May – August 2020, the percentage of people who have developed symptoms and actually self-isolated is a paltry 18%. It was 50% in April which was low, and has fallen, yes fallen, since.
This inherent selfishness of society at large means that the only way to force adherence to any large enough degree, you have to affect people’s pockets. If it doesn’t affect your pocket, nothing is going to change.
Once we get out of this pandemic, and we will get out (we have to!) as a society look at how we have promoted this selfishness culture over decades and dig deep to consider whether we want to continue this ‘me, me, me’, or a little wider, ‘my family only, screw the rest of you’ society we currently live in. Or whether we should instead pivot, re-engage the compassion in all of our hearts and work to build a society that we can all be proud of.