There are three groups of people in BC ignoring covid precautions: a small minority of jerks who willfully reject them as expectations and would also reject them as hard rules; https://twitter.com/ianjamesyoung70/status/1327821701413965824

Then there’s the larger minority who are contrarians who deliberately ignore expectations but would unhappily follow rules;

But I think most of them are pretty normal folk who are ignorant of expectations or assume they don’t matter...because if they REALLY mattered, expectations would be loud, hard rules. These they would follow, happily or neutrally

There’s an assumption that toughening expectations on community behavior re covid, and turning them into loud, hard rules and legal mandates might result in a backlash and lower compliance

I don’t think so. There’s not much to be done about the first and worst category of deliberate scofflaws, but the rest, the majority of them? Reachable. In general BCers are pleasantly cooperative, or at least compliant. Tougher rules and mandates would work right now, I think

Victoria state in Australia presents a good case study. When the new covid case rate hit the levels we have now in BC, it triggered a hard lockdown, and then a mask law. I’m not suggesting hard lockdown in BC. But Victorians endured much hardship to achieve remarkable success

Like BC, Victoria had hundreds of daily cases. Yesterday they had zero. This was their sixteenth consecutive day with no new cases. The harsh measures worked and continue to work, three weeks after the end of lockdown.

Non-compliance is low. Scofflaws or not, no one wants a return of covid...or lockdown. The lesson is that hard rules are unpleasant and disliked. But they were overwhelmingly supported and successful. BCers? At least as cooperative and community spirited as Victorians, I reckon