Article: The Ideological Stripe of Covid-19

For some time I had been struggling with a conundrum: Why is it that Covid breaks down, more or less precisely into an ideological divide? This had been clear for a while in a kind of white-of-the-eye way before I began really to focus on it. Then it struck me: Had a ‘pandemic’ occurred when I was a feature writer and reporter with Irish newspapers about 20 years ago, I could not imagine attending editorial conferences in which the matter would be discussed as though implicitly a left-right question, or that the attitude towards it of those assembled for daily or weekly conferences would be predictable on that basis.  Yet, this is more or less what has emerged.

From reports all over the world, it seems an almost universal principle that ‘conservative’ and ‘right wing’ interests, groupings and individuals are opposed to lockdown, and ‘left-wingers’ in favour of it.  And this means that lefties are Covid believers, whereas conservatives tend more to be sceptics. In the United States, the pro-lockdown governors and mayors have all but invariably been Dems. The sceptics tend to be Republicans or ‘alt-right’ (whatever that is) bloggers and vloggers. Likewise, across Europe, the governments locking their peoples down most viciously and for long periods are those led by socialist parties, whereas the more relaxed countries — Sweden, a special case, aside —  tend to be led by parties of the populist right.  We have come to take this situation for granted, as though the reasons for it are self-evident. But, actually, there are not in the least clear. If Covid is, as many authorities insist, a health issue, why would it automatically break down in this manner? Why is the attitude of your neighbour predictable on political grounds? Why does someone’s attitude to Covid predict so much else about him?

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