As COVID-19 endlessly drags on, an uncanny analogy has begun to take shape. And rather than being an extreme ideology restricted to neocons and neoliberals, it now counts a large segment of the progressive left as its most faithful adherents.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Whenever Democrats have needed to show that they are serious about the threat of terrorism, of brutal and repressive dictators abroad, or the unauthorized violations of the sovereignty of key Middle Eastern Oil State allies, the response has always been the same: economic sanctions to starve the threat of its life-support system and the targeted use of precision-guided munitions to destroy strategically important infrastructure. The intention is to cause the maximum suffering of the general population in these countries so that the political legitimacy of the targeted despot (Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chavez) will be eroded to the point when a coup could be carried-out. It's legitimacy comes from the fact that its intentions are the overthrow of anti-democratic regimes, the liberation of people and the spread of democracy that will, in the long-term, spare precious human life, even if there are some necessary costs to bear in the short term.

COVID-19 lockdowns and mandated vaccination now play the same role, except that they are also embraced by large segments of the progressive left (even the ACLU). Here, the goal is the preservation of the public health, the saving of those lives that aren't capable or refuse to make a proper risk assessment for themselves as well as protecting those others from the second-order effects of those inabilities. So, vaccination is argued to protect one from serious illness and death and, as such, is unarguably in the moral best interest of anybody to have themselves vaccinated. And since those that are unvaccinated may be more likely to need treatment, they run the risk of overwhelming the healthcare system and preventing the more deserving from accessing care, thus leading to unnecessary suffering and death. On these moral grounds then, the government is authorized to do whatever is necessary to both prevent the spread of the virus and the effects of the disease it causes to safeguard the 'public health' of its citizens. Since the beginning of the pandemic, nearly two years ago, that has meant: lockdowns, social-distancing, and vaccination.

Leaving aside the evidence that each of these might be politically motivated, based on sham science, designed for economic reasons to enrich one or another corporation or industry; what is interesting about them is that they, just like sanctions and missile strikes, give the appearance to those that employ them of being deadly serious about the virus and their role as Public Health Officials. The virus spreads, which is a type of movement; lockdowns and quarantines and travel bans address this movement by bringing it to a halt. Science supporting these claims is only perfunctorily needed for the learning disabled who can't grasp simple concepts. The virus causes disease that can lead to death; the miracle of vaccines that prevent the disease from doing harm can be injected to target and destroy only that specific viral threat. It doesn't matter that studies have shown the vaccines to wane in effectiveness¹ over time and to not prevent the spread of the virus²: what matters is that the injection targets the virus alone for treatment, separating it out from the myriad other medical issues that might confuse and detract from the clarity of the goal. It's not boots on the ground and an ugly ground war; its eliminating the virus and leaving everything else alone. And it's science: not messy, expensive cluster bomb drug cocktails, but cheap, effective laser-guided-through-the-bloodstream cruise missiles.

Except that it doesn't matter how much collateral damage this approach causes—the shuttered livelihoods, the stunted years of early childhood lost behind a mask or stuck at home with mommy and daddy while they fret about paying the bills; the depression and suicide, the increased use of narcotics to medicate from the total loss of hope in a world gone totally beyond their control; the crushing of social movements that are no longer allowed to congregate, to meet and discuss, to plan and to strategize. The total and complete transformation of ordinary life into an unending state of medical exception, fear and isolation is the purest expression of the seriousness of the approach: all of life has become a form of medical treatment that reflects in itself that which has been prescribed for it. Locked-down and masked the citizenry of every country that employs these tactics trundles along in a fugue of dejected obligation along the plastic covered paths hastily erected for it that lead, every several months now, back to needle injection sites and testing facilities. And to the extent that these policies have been relaxed, they have been relaxed only for the vaccinated; for the unvaccinated the misery of this existence is the explicit sanction that will eventually, one way or another, bring about compliance with the International Order.

Yes, public health officials and all their political and media allies are serious about dealing with the virus, just as they are about the threat of terrorism. The clarity and precision of their instruments themselves are metaphors for it. Just not much else³.

Footnotes