> In any case, why would a bureaucrat want to go out of their way to close hospitals if there wasn't a good reason? Who benefits from that? Politicians benefit

> In any case, why would a bureaucrat want to go out of their way to close hospitals if there wasn't a good reason? Who benefits from that? Politicians benefit from that. The current situation is no different than "No one ever got fired for hiring IBM". In this case "hiring IBM" is a surrogate for doing whatever your voting base believes in. In blue states, the majority believes in shutting things down aggressively, so politicians do. In red states, the majority thinks we should keep things open, so politicians do. Politicians by and large in this crisis aren't responding to what experts say, they are responding to their own self interest. This is super easy to spot by seeing what experts are saying or what evidence is raised that they summarily dismiss because it contradicts what their constituency desires.