It wouldn't be entirely their choice, as the environment they exist in fundamentally shapes how people feel about the world. As you move through the world now there are lots of physical symbols that generate fear - perspex screens, masks, signage, etc. They are designed to protect people but they do also reinforce a culture of fear. In a survey of 5,000 people in the UK just a couple of weeks ago, 60% said they would submit to indefinite lockdown if the government continued to signal it was necessary for public safety.
As the lockdown is relaxed, all of those physical symbols will still exist and it seems possible that will keep people fearful long after the government changes its messaging. If that is the case the knock-on economic effects could be huge, and millions of jobs could be lost on top. At which point people will ask whether some of the steps taken that generated that fear were misjudged. When police were publicly shaming people for long walks in remote spaces, it got a lot of support from many. As time goes in it seems increasingly clear that this really wasn't risky behaviour, and all it did was reinforce a total fear of the outside world for many.
Authority figures in many instances have created and strengthened that fear, so I don't think it's entirely true to say people have chosen to feel that way. After that point it isn't as simple as flicking a switch and saying I'm not scared any more. Especially for those suffering from anxiety, which by some measures was already at unprecedented levels before the crisis. There have already been signals from the government that they think they may have instilled a little too much fear, and I reckon it could be one of the key questions of the next few months. If only 1 in 3 people decide they're ready to go back to the shops, cafés etc., as they're saying currently, places will go bankrupt very quickly. Two-thirds of those places are "independents", and 96% of UK businesses have fewer than 10 employees. That is people's livelihood disappearing, not just losing a job.
There are always unintended consequences and deep, long-lasting fear could be one of them. However dramatic changes have happened a few times in this pandemic so hopefully people will suddenly snap out of it when the time comes.
The very real problem is the continued assumption that the issues caused by fear and anxiety are things we will be primarily dealing with further down the line when we ease lockdown restrictions, when in reality they are something we are over 2 months into the midst of and are already at the point of damage limitation, and in quite a few cases doing and planning things which are just plain illogical.
The hospitality sector and people being scared to go into a pub is just one aspect of a massive web of problems that need a lot of thought and care put into them. Using my own workplace as an example...the thought process is very much that everyone works from home from now on...but the reality is that very few jobs can be done effectively this way, and people also rely naturally on social and personal interaction...without that there is no sense of normality and things like fear and anxiety quickly take control.
Another issue is how you train a building surveyor, health inspector, social care worker, housing officer, enviromental health expert, etc. when you only interact with them via zoom meetings and whatsapp messages...it is impossible (and again I'm only using examples from a single workplace here). So the end result here is that the people who are coming into the office and going out to visit busy workplaces and interact, are invariably the older 60+ people who have the necessary experience and knowledge to do it on their own, and so are dealing with increased stress and workload as well as a sense of isolation from their work colleagues.
Even in its pure basic terms of being a way to minimise the risk of death from the virus this just doesn't make any sense either in the immediate or longer term. Someone my age could walk into 1,000 busy workplaces and be less at risk than a 60 year old is by spending 20 minutes in a single busy workplace. There is no point having a blanket risk reduction in place if it means putting the exact people you are doing it to try to protect directly in the firing line, so there needs to be more flexible thinking. Where this will hit as well is that a lot of people working from home will face the prospect of losing their job or struggling quite badly with aspects like depression and a sense of worthlessness/isolation. Basic health also becomes an issue; "lol I've put on like 2 stone in lockdown and started smoking 2 packs a day again" - funny now. Less funny and more a major health concern when it's your life for the forseable future.
If you have no effective way to train and interact with staff, the immediate impact is also that you are paying a number of them to effectively do nothing, and when you are already making less money there's very quickly a problem there. The more medium term impact is you quite quickly find you don't have an effective workforce as you start to lose the people who you rely on and who could train and teach others. From a purely economic point of view, a bigger business might ride that out, a smaller one and a lot of public service sectors will really struggle quite badly to...and remember in the case of many businesses and all public service sectors we are over 2 months into this problem.
There needs to be a really carefully thought out balance of how to handle the fear factor in a way that also accounts for economic and mental/social wellbeing. The impression I get is that people seem to think that as long as furlough is a thing it's not a current problem...but unless a lot of planning and implementation is put in place now it's going to end up biting very hard and making life very miserable for a frankly catastrophic number of people.
In concerns me as well that the mental wellbeing of those told to shield or sel isolate has basically been forgotten about completely. People are bickering about football games and a guy driving to a castle, while there are elderly people living on their own who've not seen the outside world in 2 months and still can't even order a food delivery in many cases because there aren't enough people willing to deliver it to them, due to someone a third their age being scared into doing nothing.