There’s also the complication that by deciding to protest, individuals incur a non-negligible personal cost (in time and risk), but only make a tiny difference to the size & hence effectiveness of the demonstration. Also any benefit arising mostly accrues to others. All that on top of the risk of you spreading the virus to others.
All told, it’s far from clear it’s worth people’s while to demonstrate, even for major issues like this one. It depends on things like the size of the demonstration and your degree of altruism. I did a rough model of this a while back (excluding the virus spreading affect):
There’s also the complication that by deciding to protest, individuals incur a non-negligible personal cost (in time and risk), but only make a tiny difference to the size & hence effectiveness of the demonstration. Also any benefit arising mostly accrues to others. All that on top of the risk of you spreading the virus to others.
All told, it’s far from clear it’s worth people’s while to demonstrate, even for major issues like this one. It depends on things like the size of the demonstration and your degree of altruism. I did a rough model of this a while back (excluding the virus spreading affect):
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/juusvkkMvuC5D7Een/rationality-of-demonstrating-and-voting