I think that’s probably part of it. They also know who’s saying what on social media, on the phone, and texts, etc. Covid and vax thing may be a partial test of the predictive model, while simultaneous being a new datapoint for further refine the model. But there are a lot of other data points as well which give each of us a “profile” which can be used to predict (with various degrees of success) our behavior.
So before they can institute overt totalitarianism (it’s moving quickly in that direction) they probably have to be confident their model is accurate, but also that the general ratio of obedient/disobedient is high enough. Given how fast we are moving, it seems that they are either desperate or confident that their models are working and the landscape is favorable. But in either case, wishful thinking and overconfidence will get them, if earth changes don’t do it first.
To Ina’s point, I think that’s true of a lot of people. Remember all the polls saying Hillary will win? What they can’t control is how many people are practicing a form of strategic enclosure, and all those who just don’t discuss this stuff online at all. So there will always be a rather large element of surprise and uncertainty. But their wishful thinking will likely make them minimize the scope of this element to their own detriment. Also, they probably suck at data science for the same reasons and have over-fitted their model in other ways, which may appear to be way more predictive than it really is. Garbage in, garbage out.