I've wondered at this myself. Initially I thought this was a crisis that incontrovertibly admitted only one interpretation. Then I remembered All of Human History and realised that we're headed for a major conflict over the meaning of the pandemic. https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1247722957285269504

There will be narratives for all eventualities. Let's say all our hopes come to pass and social distancing works so well that we get to have some semblance of a social life by summer. The Trump cult will say this proved the crisis was overblown.

Let's say things get much worse and much more social distancing is necessary. We lose summer. A depression starts. The goalposts for an acceptable bodycount will shift alarmingly past mass graves.

In every case, their favoured ideological enemies will still be there for the pillorying. In the best case scenario, the Trump cult blames eebil elites for ruining their Easter for socialism; in the worst case scenario they'll still claim we're about to turn a corner.

Inevitably, as every pandemic does, it *will* turn that corner, and that moment will not be wasted by the extreme right and their enablers, to fashion "victory" from whatever wreckage is closest at that point on the infection curve. Whether the death toll is 20k or 200k. Or worse

I should say there's another worst-case scenario and it's the one where the far right actually snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. We trend towards quashing the pandemic by June/July, and then they force an end to containment measures early by declaring victory too soon.

This causes a preventable second surge. For the moment, that may be one of the most likely paths before us. Do not doubt the capacity of these people to make up whatever they need to. No reality is so terrible as to finally convince them they're ideologically blinkered.

Trump's own behaviour is proof enough that there is no crisis so severe as to compel decency from him--and the rest of the political right takes its cues from him.

There is a sociology of apocalypse and I could write a whole book on the matter. But the thesis is simply this: humans will make whatever meaning of the apocalypse they so please.