The 'Do Something' Effect

I am trapped at home. We all are. They call it self-isolation because it's good for us, & for some bizarre reason, we believe them for once. We're all being socially responsible by being socially disconnected - except through social networking. We're connecting more without touching. We're doing more to be connected because we've been told not to connect.

We're all 'doing something' by not doing stuff - not going out, not congregating, not travelling, trying to minimise the shopping. Sometimes, we're 'not doing stuff' in the extreme - like hoarding toilet paper so that we don't have to buy it tomorrow, but if you miss out, then you have to keep coming back until you beat the other people trying to hoard it & make them turn up the next day to try & hoard. But, on the whole, we're pretty good at adjusting to 'not doing stuff'.

However, there are still people who tell us that we don't have to 'not do stuff'. It's all a hoax - not doing stuff won't help anything & it's not going to save you.
This is not your average crackpot, but someone with a wide audience of believers & a history of saying things counter to common sense. This is a person of great authority & influence who says that, this time, not doing stuff is a bad thing.

This is indeed the same person who says that climate change is a hoax & we shouldn't do anything about it. In that case, not doing stuff is what he is advocating, now, he's saying that we shouldn't not do stuff.
I'm confused. Perhaps he's confused.

Let's break it down. When it comes to climate change, doing stuff is bad, because it's not our fault - blame the leprechauns or ignore the data, it doesn't matter, it just isn't our fault (by us, I mean his audience, which isn't me).
When it comes to diseases, not doing stuff is bad, because it isn't our fault - blame the leprechauns (who don't look like us) or ignore the medical advice ... it just isn't our fault.

There's a consistency in denialism (no, there isn't!) that anything is obviously someone else's problem, & they should fix it, because we don't have to. Occasionally, we won't fix it, because they should, which is not any better.
It comes down to accepting no responsibility for anything, ever.
I am reminded, strangely, of the broken window policy (which is zero tolerance for aberrations) - if a window is broken, fix the window, & that will make it unlikely there will be a second or third window broken, & the policy will eventually lead to no windows broken in the first place.
This is (almost) a proven policy. Looking for someone to blame for the first broken window almost always leads to a second. It's a matter of resourcing - wasting your time looking for the culprit stops you from solving the problem.

This would appear to be the main thrust of denialism - if you 'do something' positive, if you follow the expert advice, then you are taking responsibility to fix a window you didn't break. You are taking responsibility for making the world a better place without actually finding out who's responsible for making it worse.
Heavens to Murgatroyd! What are you thinking? What are you doing?

Never ever do something - unless you've been specifically told not to, in which case you should ... or not.