The Wuhan coronavirus carries a heavy ideological payload of conformity and submission to authority. The Chinese are aggressively using it to promote their model of fascism. Others of an authoritarian bent are making political use of it as well.

The basic idea that the virus is a form of divine punishment for failing to implement and obey the "right" policies is clearly false - there are far too many case surges in places that did everything "right" - but it's irresistible for believers in centralized authority.

It also has some appeal to the public, because they want a frightening and confusing epidemic to be made simpler. Do X, Y, and Z and you won't get the virus; if you got the virus, you must have failed to do X, Y, and Z. It's comforting because it's simpler than the truth.

This is a very old compulsion, going all the way back to using supernatural mythology to explain the weather and natural disasters. Please the gods and there will be no famine; if there is famine, you must have displeased the gods. We hunger for simplicity and assurance.

The inherent problem with such ways of thinking is they invite mob psychosis. People who think famine was caused by displeasing the gods become violently angry at suggestions to the contrary. Those who profit from the enforced belief system will eagerly fan the flames of anger.

The enforced belief system quickly acquires heavy moral overtones. Obedience is righteous; disobedience is sinful and evil. Debates become one-sided crusades. Information that contradicts the simplified, moralistic belief system is suppressed.

Human beings have a great appetite for living this way. It's not entirely irrational. People working hard to provide for their families just want to know a simple formula for living safely, a clear set of procedures they can follow to make everything be okay.

The coronavirus is dangerously useful to people who want to create fusions of ideology and morality, people who seek to forcibly restore faith in authority after it fell to an all-time low, and those who assert the superiority of centralized control over individual freedoms.

In truth, the big advantages authoritarians have in such a crisis is their callous disregard for individual lives and their ability to lie without consequence. China was trapping sick people in their homes by welding the doors shut. They quarantined cities bigger than New York.

And of course they constantly lie about how many cases and deaths they really had, and even though everyone knows they're lying, everyone implicitly treats the lies as truth by only comparing more honest and open societies in their "worst coronavirus responses" analysis.

You really don't want to live under any of the authoritarian regimes that claim to have done a bang-up job of handling the coronavirus. Even if their claims were true - and they aren't - you wouldn't want to live through the measures they imposed on outbreak areas.

What the coronavirus DID reveal in many Western societies was bureaucratic sclerosis, bloated agencies that forgot about their core missions, hyper-politicization, and media-driven panicky stampedes. We should address those problems without becoming MORE authoritarian. /end