Lockdowns are back. To many of us, it would appear as if the entire human race has learned absolutely nothing in the past eight months. Despite the overwhelming evidence that the cost of lockdowns far outweighs the limited benefits, many policymakers lack the backbone or creativity to come up with any alternative. Internet memes have shrewdly asked: If a lockdown worked the first time, why are we doing it again? If a lockdown didn’t work the first time, why are we doing it again?
One of the most striking observations of the pandemic is that our society’s reactions have fallen almost completely along partisan lines. Conservatives tend to be anti-lockdown and anti-government mandates, while liberals take the opposite view. Conservatives seek to contextualize COVID-19 data on deaths and infections with additional considerations, such as age, risk factors, and proportionality (i.e. total numbers versus cases per 100,000). Liberals obsess over total deaths and case counts, but nothing else.
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