I agree with your entire post, but wanted to highlight this. As I have said in another thread, if you are going to tell people that they cannot travel, go to restaurants, wear masks when they leave their house, cancel holiday gatherings with family, etc. then I believe that people will come together and do these sorts of thinks (look what we did in WWII).
But people are people, and one of the greatest fears that we have is that we are being treated unfairly, that we are chumps. And when you see the governor’s spouse out flouting the rules, you not only think you about being treated unfairly, but that this thing isn’t as bad as they are saying. If it was so bad, why isn’t the governor’s spouse scared enough to go out?
You aren’t messaging this thing for scientists and great thinkers. You are messaging this to the general public (you know the George Carlin thing is that the average person has an IQ of 100 and half of the people are dumber than that). The people see that they got COVID or their brother got it and had no symptoms at all. So why am I wearing a fucking mask and not able to travel or go to a bar? Why is it safe for 2,000 BLM protestors to be in my home town, but a 60,000 fan capacity stadium must have zero fans?
You can point out how stupid that is, but it gets you nowhere. Make fun of those people and call them racists. How does that help? As a leader, you (the general you) are speaking to people who think at such a level. It is imperative that you set that example, and for all of the reasons Sam_Stone said, they failed miserably and continue to fail miserably.