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It’s to no one’s benefit to politicize Covid-response policy: admiring aspects of Sweden’s approach doesn’t make you a fascist ghoul, nor does thinking hydroxychloroquine is worth the risk — especially early in treatment — make you a Trump supporter. Somehow, all pragmatism belongs to the right; to balance, adapt, ameliorate — everything other than total lockdown — is judged by conventional liberals as amoral, idiotic, and despotic. Democrats have become the party of institutions — regardless of what and who those institutions are (FBI, WHO) — and, as a result, Democrats will defend institutions regardless of the result. Sweden is now no longer a progressive fantasy, because it violated the norms of liberal policy-making; only negative hydroxychloroquine studies are promoted by the news, because Trump promoted hydroxychloroquine. Truths are manufactured to fit ideologies; accustomed to feeling comfortably on the right side of history, liberals will cling to their initial assumptions to the very end. Since mass lockdowns are the institutional answer, mass lockdowns must be correct. Since anyone who questions this must be an idiotic fascist — anyone who does… is.
