People collectively are sufficiently manipulable that society only functions when certain manipulations are forbidden.
This is true even though, as you say, mindlessly doing the opposite of what the government says is as dogmatic as blindly following it (a lesson I learned as a toddler, from my sister doing the "yes no yes no yes no no yes oops" trick on me).
Public communications is hard at the best of times let alone during a novel pandemic with high uncertainty on correct actions, but it's what the government needs to be good at to function, so them messing communications up is… well, I was going to say "blame worthy", but then I remember that air travel got good by avoiding blame culture, so shall we say "a learning opportunity"?
People collectively are sufficiently manipulable that society only functions when certain manipulations are forbidden.
This is true even though, as you say, mindlessly doing the opposite of what the government says is as dogmatic as blindly following it (a lesson I learned as a toddler, from my sister doing the "yes no yes no yes no no yes oops" trick on me).
Public communications is hard at the best of times let alone during a novel pandemic with high uncertainty on correct actions, but it's what the government needs to be good at to function, so them messing communications up is… well, I was going to say "blame worthy", but then I remember that air travel got good by avoiding blame culture, so shall we say "a learning opportunity"?