Human nature is such that people (in aggregate) don’t take a threat seriously until it’s affecting people they know or places they care about. And when the government tries to force the issue it generates serious backlash.
Case in point, look at Texas pandemic response. The state adopted a lockdown and restrictions pretty early on because they saw what was happening in Europe and New York. But those places are very far away, and Texas is a very big state. No city had more than a dozen or so cases at that time, and a heavy test and trace policy might have been viable for slowing things down for another week or two.
But ironically, because the government locked down before the crisis was acute locally, there was a huge backlash and they lifted the lockdown prematurely - which I think psychologically reinforced the idea that the disease “wasn’t going to be a problem in TX.” Now cases are skyrocketing, they’re rolling back the reopening, but compliance with the restrictions is very low.
In short, I don’t think the majority cares about risks until their own neighborhood is burning.
Thus the effective solution to societal problems must be (1) easy, (2) cheap, and/or (3) come with exciting benefits right now.
You can see this in action with Elon Musk and Tesla. His stated vision is to eliminate the combustion automobile. His approach is to make a “way cooler car” that people really want and that is seen as superior to the old cars, and then over time figure out how to drive the price down to where there’s no reason to buy combustion anymore. It takes a really long time, but it seems to be working.