[mwexler]

So, this post suggests that lockdowns don't "work": among other things, a lockdown may create reactance causing people to not not only avoid changing their behaviors to reduce risk, it may even make some perform behaviors to increase risk, to themselves and others.

It's just disappointing that, if true, the opposite doesn't work. If only this happened: the gov says "We choose to do no lockdowns, and just have a list of suggestions. No need to follow them. Do your normal activities" and the response: "You can't tell me what to do! Screw you! I'm going to wear masks AND distance, esp among vulnerable populations! Do my normal activities my foot! So there, suck it!".

Reverse psychology always seems to work better in marketing, and low budget movies and sitcoms.

[Viliam1234]

It worked like this in Slovakia, during the first wave. Government told people not to buy masks, people started making their own masks from cloth and selling them to neighbors. Cities started closing schools. Supermarkets limited the number of people allowed in the shop at the same time. Only later government made this mandatory across the whole country. People acted rationally, and I think Slovakia had the lowest infection per capita in whole Europe.

And then somehow everything got wrong during summer. Ironically, because almost no one got sick during the first wave, it became popular to believe that the entire pandemic is just made up by evil Western media. People took vacations all across the world, and in September shared the viruses at schools, which were no longer closed because "education is important".

In the beginning of September, the situation was worse than ever during the first wave, and the government did nothing. In October it was 20 times higher, and in the beginning of Novermber the goverment finally woke up and imposed some half-assed measures, which at least keep the infection rate constant (i.e. still 20 times higher than during the first wave).

Not sure what is the lesson here. Perhaps that reverse psychology can work for a while... and then it may revert again. Because if it is cool to be a contrarian and oppose the government, soon this opposition becomes the new normal, and then it becomes cool to oppose what was done yesterday. And also that the better you protect yourself against a disease, the more people will believe the disease was not real.

[st1ck]

Authorities in the US and Europe did essentially say this in the early stages, and were (rightfully) criticized for such a policy by certain people. But that was admittedly pretty small percentage of population and also probably not the kind of people you have in mind.