people will start to ignore it

I'm not sure if anyone can ignore the sound of a bell. I think this is a very well-chosen tool. It sticks in your subconscious and stays there. I remember very well how during Covid, maybe shortly after they declared the pandemic in the country, one evening the bell rang at 9:00 while we were sitting at the dinner table. It was that insistent alarm sound that I had never heard before. It was eerie. It reminded me somehow of the plague times of the Middle Ages. Surely the bells were rung the same way back then. And it remains. Stuck in the subconscious, even in the conscious. You think you're ignoring it, but it stays there, it goes deep.
I searched to hear your Totenglocke on YouTube, and the melody is definitely not as piercing to the senses as the traditional one here - 33 single, slow and agonizing strikes, lasting infinitely long.