New Zealand had about 5 million people, and PM Ardern successfully implemented a total lockdown that drove new COVID cases to effectively zero. Then she was voted out, and per Aurynn Shaw the plague ships were let back in.
It can be done. It just requires leadership, discipline, and the willingness to take strict, decisive, politically unpopular measures against violators and spreaders of misinformation. As Schwarzenegger said, when there's a pandemic on, screw your freedoms.
Equality among races was wildly unpopular across the entire western hemisphere for a while there.
Forcing business owners to allow people of all races into your business was both unpopular and cited as an example of authoritarianism.
An American example: MLK never had popular support during his life. His approval rating around the time of his assassination was in the 30s or so. It would not be unfair to say that in the places that mattered most, he was wildly unpopular.
Doing the right thing is frequently unpopular at the time that you do it. There is a balance, but if you give everyone agency, you have to figure out how to keep the assholes from using their agency to infringe on another's agency.
What it requires is authoritarianism. It requires to do things that are wildly unpopular. I'm happy every time wildly unpopular things fail. It does not matter to me that those who want to implement authoritarianism think they are right. Even if they are, we have to have agency.