“why don’t YOU work on yourself to be a better person. I’m sure that would influence the people around you and the would grow.”
“I don’t understand – why do the ????? ???? need to make a ??? of ????? ????? ????? if God did already?”
Your advice is commonsense and in an ideal world it would be practical. Instead, we are all busy with our lives and unless our Gedolim (whom we tend to listen to as if they have nevuah direct from God) tell us how serious the situation is, we will believe someone else’s merits will save all our necks.
This severity of a threat has been on our people time and time again in our history, and the above suggestions didn’t save the day. It took until the Gedolim explained how grave the situation was and set aside time for fasting/mourning/repentance that our people took it seriously and merited a yeshuah.