You can't endlessly play with people's fear to make them comply - and, unfortunately and unwisely, that's precisely what most governments did. At some point, people grew sick and tired of constantly being threatened and fell into denial as means of protecting themselves. Now that even the WHO already claim that complete containment of the virus is extremely unlikely anytime soon, people will have to learn to live with it. Sadly, there's a good chance that the lesson will be learned the hard way.