After a year in which good news has been hard to come by, recent developments on the pandemic front are bound to elicit more joy than the coming arrival of spring. The availability of effective vaccines tops the list of good news.

Another dose of good news is that, along with continuing mask use, there has been an uptick in the number of people staying home and avoiding restaurants, and a reduction in gatherings of 10 or more people in much of the United States that began in mid-November, according to data tracking by USC.

These developments have led to a steep decline in case totals across much of the country, including California, which is at around 2,600 new cases a day, down from more than 40,000 in early January.

As soon as vaccine approval appeared imminent, the percentage of the population saying that it was taking precautions increased.

There is some compelling psychology at play here, psychology that plays out in many areas of everyday life.

We don’t simply react to what has happened; we react to what easily could have happened as well. That is why Olympic silver medalists are generally less happy than the bronze medalists they just outperformed. The silver medalist must deal with having almost won the coveted gold medal; the bronze medalist came close to having no medal at all.

This dynamic may also play into people’s decisions about following pandemic guidelines.

Getting deathly ill is a tragedy under any circumstances, but especially so when it “didn’t have to happen.” People are more inclined to take precautions when they know that help is on the way and they’re almost out of danger.

Stated differently, some people who refused to keep social distance or were lax about mask-wearing may have acted out of a type of fatalism, the kind of thinking that could cause someone to say, “If my number’s called, so be it. I’m not going to stop living by trying to prevent it.”

But knowing that they will soon be able to get a vaccine can counteract such fatalism. People understand that they would feel foolish getting ill just before they could get vaccinated, and they may also worry that others will think they’re foolish, too. So why risk it, they reason: making them more open to complying with public health recommendations.

The psychology behind this “near-miss” effect could be harnessed to increase compliance even further. Health officials could encourage this kind of thinking by putting out messages that tell people “a return to your old life is just around the corner.” The closer people feel to an end of this crisis, the more likely they will change their behavior to make that come true.

Thomas D. Gilovich is a professor of psychology at Cornell University. William Schulze is a professor of applied economics and management at Cornell.