One lesson here is that psyops only work in a nominal range of material conditions.

You can keep comfortable people from paying too much attention to a distant problem, but once daily life becomes too difficult, people's pattern recognition starts seeing through it fast.

Also people are extremely sensitive to rates of change. The elites panicked and/or got impatient, thought they had it in the bag, and now the general public is more activated and cohesive than they have probably ever been.