To be clear, I think the evidence indicates that lockdowns work, especially if they are done early.

But that we see that as our only option indicates a deeper dysfunction that people seem not to know how to even talk about, or that there is anything to discuss. In many people’s (especially liberals’) minds, it is lockdowns or nothing. One must wonder why this is the case, when there are so many other NPIs that are possible, and question why one must worship at the lockdown altar. Especially since lockdowns are so anti-human and so inhumane, when rapid tests, test and trace, masking, etc., could obviate the need for the measure altogether.

Why do people get so excited about lockdowns? Why is this extreme measure all they seem capable of thinking of? Those are the questions I ask that I am not supposed to ask. (And I am not supposed to ask them because we are not meant to think of any alternative.)

And now I will answer my own question: people get so hot and bothered about lockdowns because they feel meaningful. Monastic. Austere. Ascetic. Consequential. And they allow politicians to exercise control, which is always important to those who seek power. And also not unimportant, for the libs looking for that missing religion in their life they fill a compensatory role.

That is why the near-orgiastic ecstasy around them and the calls for the “passion of the lockdown” will now never go away.