I still do not believe the average American under the age of 30 is taking this very seriously. Part of that is because of the way the disease was initially expressed. Anything said to target old people is usually ignored by younger people who, to a certain age, believe they are invulnerable. In fact, I don’t think many Americans were bothered by this at all until the states went on lockdown. At that point the pandemic became an inconvenience, and some people really started paying attention.
We failed in the PR sense with this one. We failed with the term ‘social distancing.’ Why create a softball PC term when we could say maintain physical distancing and add menace to the rule. We ought to be maintaining that physical distance and we ought to be treating this disease as a dangerous murderer vs. Stuff we had to endure. However, the hyperpartisan news providers that spit out filter-bubble tailored data have a different agenda: Keep people watching.
All of this makes me wonder if our species is really going to be okay in the future. We may not be built for this earth long term.