I feel like this take is just overused. This whole line of thinking presupposes that Western Democratic Societies gain anything from locking people down, which

I feel like this take is just overused. This whole line of thinking presupposes that Western Democratic Societies gain anything from locking people down, which I don’t think they do. Our economies are (generally speaking) consumer economies built on a base of individualized consumption and hedonistic pursuit with no regard for collective good. Locking people down and inhibiting the engine of our capitalist economies serves no benefit. Not to mention all the other avenues of control that are already existent and much more obscure. It wouldn’t make sense to destroy the economy and the legitimacy that props up the current power structures in order to gain control that already largely exists either through the state or private industry. This feels like a way of contrasting the current situation with measures take post 9/11, which I think are much more nefarious and unjustified. To be clear, I’m sure historians will be interested in the measures taken to fight this pandemic, just not for some “totalitarian control” reasons but rather for the necessity of fighting the virus on a global scale. The scale of the measures are unprecedented, but locking down isn’t some crazy novel idea. I mean even in Camus’ “The Plague” there is mention of that kind of strategy.