People being terrified of cities and public transit.

I don’t know where you live, but in PDX it’s a hit or miss. If you go during rush hours on a work day in the suburbs, then you are mostly fine. Otherwise… You have high chances of being harassed by homeless people, spat on, threatened, leered at, smelling something awful. So yeah, not divorced of reality.

You just described the for-profit mental health crisis which only persists because it is for-profit healthcare is detached from reality