Excellent definition of gaslighting, indeed! The gaslighting has been used in conjunction with gradual change. Since people are so stuck in their smartphones, they don't reflect on their own lives, they don't notice the (not so gradual) change and things like how masks were supposed to be for when we can't social distance, and that social distancing was to flatten the curve, just to name the most obvious.
Three is good advice. Often gaslights are trying to make have a freakout OR not react at all, even even when it's absolutely ridiculous. The latter here is what the government is doing to us: they're slowly leading us down a path where we do more and more ridiculous things and purposefully do no react for fear of looking like one of those crazy "Karens" the media has made you fear becoming.
A lot of gaslighters who do it consciously and offensively have honed their skills and do it carefully and gradually; you may never know they're gaslighting you until they get sloppy and slip up while you're being observant. The government is sloppy! Their increases were hardly gradual by the end there, and many people aren't doing anything except growing their coping mechanisms to mentally-ill proportions. I guess they really got their foot-in-the-door with fear based on lies which set into motion things that are difficult to undo even if we can point the finger at where we went wrong; we're already under the spell. Break the spell and break the cycle!
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Pfffft, that's just a conspiracy theory!