It’s a combination of apathy, confusion, and fatigue. The mainstream news cycle is relentlessly pumping out something to engender fear, only to then bury it under a new alleged cause for concern, once the original concern doesn’t manifest/the story has been exhausted.

All the while, there’s no accountability if and when a retraction is warranted. So, the masses are beaten down, cannot keep up with the latest fear-of-the-day, and are genuinely unaware of who they can trust/what to believe.

IMHO, this all leads a lot of individuals to tune out or when pressed to simply take the path of least resistance in accordance with whatever the latest narrative is at the time.