The US has failed dramatically in its response to COVID-19 — as have other far-right nations. This correlation between cultural conservativism and the inability to rationally and responsibly deal with the pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands of American conservatives.
All viruses are contagious in one way or another, and all viruses mutate. Most mutations result in a virus that doesn’t work, but some result in a more effective virus. The rate at which these more effective viruses are created depends almost entirely on how many people are infected with the virus, and a successful mutation can’t be successful unless it can infect a new host.
The medical community’s guidance on COVID-19 was designed to accomplish two things: 1) To save as many people as possible from death, and 2) To prevent the virus from mutating into a new strain before it could be defeated with a vaccine. But instead of going along with that guidance (masks, social distancing, closing schools, closing bars, restaurants, etc.), Americans chose to fight against that guidance as did people in places like Britain, South Africa, and Brazil.
The result of those poor decisions is that the virus has won — there are now at least four versions of COVID-19:
1) Wuhan: Original COVID-19
2) UK: B.1.1.7
3) South Africa: B.1.351
4) Brazil: P.1
I say that the virus has won because it is adapting faster than we can get people vaccinated — but this is only because so many people chose to do the wrong thing. While some experts say it will take 7 years to get COVID-19 under control, other experts have been saying for a long time that we will not get it under control at all.
You may be aware that in the US there is a very strong correlation between conservativism and age, and if you’ve been reading our website, you know that Democrats and Republicans are both conservatives. Because the deaths caused by COVID-19 mostly affect elderly people, COVID-19 is a disease that kills conservatives.
The upshot of all this is that conservatives have chosen to kill conservatives. It’s not really surprising — we’ve learned over the last 5 years that conservatives would rather die than accept that their worldview is incorrect. While the QAnon people live in a more fantastical reality than regular Republicans, and Republicans live in a more fantastical reality than Democrats, Democrats are also living in a fantastical reality. Those three realities share a common thread — a desperate need to sustain their way of life, and purposeful rewriting of any part of reality that conflicts with that.
The US response to COVID-19 (meaning the combined response of the government and the American people as a whole) has become an enormous conservative suicide machine. It’s like Jonestown except that the mob is even more enthusiastic about drinking the Kool-Aid because not every cup is poisoned. Over 465,000 people have died so far, and I would guess that is over 400,000 conservatives, and with the virus adapting faster than our response, I think we can eventually (years from now) achieve a death count of conservatives that is in the millions.
Consider what this will do to elections. In 2020, there are many elections that were decided by a very small difference in votes. This disease-caused demographic shift — in conjunction with already existing demographic shifts — might well end conservative dominance of the US much more quickly than we had expected that to happen. That won’t result in the end of bad governance in the US — because it just means the Democrats will gain solid control of national government — but it will mean the end of the legitimization of the truly looney bullshit that we’ve been dealing with lately.
As I mentioned, this relationship between COVID-19 response failure and conservativeness doesn’t just exist in the US. This death-induced shift to the left will be a global phenomenon.
It’s funny that conservatives are convinced that COVID-19 is a conspiracy, and yet the “conspiracy” that’s really hurting conservativism is their own misinformation about COVID-19. Although, maybe that misinformation was purposefully planted in online conservative communities by Satanic, baby-eating lizard people in order to defeat the forces of good, Christian, capitalist heroes. (It wasn’t.)
This is an interesting analysis, thank you Alan. However, I think it is important to acknowledge the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on Black and minority communities. It would be awfully convenient if this virus only impacted conservatives and particularly those who have actively thwarted efforts to control the spread, but sadly that is not the case.