I think you are arguing against a man made out of straw. People do not want to live like this, regardless of economics or theory. You can shout argument after argument; it won’t change that more and more people are going to mingle.
That's fine. People are going to do what they're going to do. I'm not quite willing to let them do it behind nonsense arguments and justifications though.
If someone's unwilling to give up going to the gym, so be it. When they couch it (as some have here) as them actually doing it for the benefit of everyone else by helping the economy, I'm going to loudly and vehemently call bullshit.
If they say they just aren't willing to change and don't care about any of the data, well as long as they actually know the data, then I'll have nothing more to discuss with them.
That said, I don't think this is how people are. I think people are living in a deep cognitive dissonance and refusing to see the facts, not acknowledging them and saying they don't care.
That's not a policy problem, that a problem of educating people that do not want to be educated. Should the rest of the populace just shift our views away from reality so people that don't want to face it can get a better deal out of some policy? That won't lead to an acceptable outcome either, when the policy in question is about public safety.