Even without the politics, it's one of those things that attracts people who both need to prove to themselves that they're intelligent and exact control over ot

Even without the politics, it's one of those things that attracts people who both need to prove to themselves that they're intelligent and exact control over others by proxy. Some people really do get a kick out of the rest of society being punished by lockdowns and having to wear PPE, and they're insidious because they believe their own bullshit. This may come off as me being a pandemic/virus/masks/vaccine denier, but that's not what I'm saying. There was a time when those same misanthropes might have been thumping the Bible. With fewer people in the West taking religion seriously, The Science became their new host given that it the public both simultaneously respects it and understands it even less than religion.