The Church of COVIDhttps://www.takimag.com/article/the-church-of-covid/Excerpt:
It turns out that treating your customers like plague carriers is not the best way to draw people into the store. Human beings are not far from our primitive past, so we still sense danger when things are amiss. Going into a place where everyone is carrying on like the end is near triggers the flight instinct. Pet Valu made themselves a bright, flashing warning sign and people responded accordingly.
There are other factors involved in their demise, as other retail chains joined the Church of COVID and lived to tell about it. Pet Valu was the small player in the pet-supply business, and in this manufactured panic, the big fish are either eating the little fish or making it so they die on their own. Another year of this and the retail space in America will be reduced to a handful of global players like Amazon and Walmart.
That is the real story of COVID-19 in America. The public-health issue stopped being an issue in the spring. The issue now is how it has become another weapon in the hands of the ruling class. Eric Hoffer observed that in America, “What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.” He made that observation a half century ago when America was still a country.
Hoffer, of course, assumed it was one of the options, not all three combined like we so often see today. COVID is now a religion for the people wearing masks in the car or out for a stroll in the park. These are public acts of piety, telling the world that the person with the decorative face muffler is a true believer. Like the grimy canvas sacks they use to tote their groceries, the mask is a moral signifier.
Of course, COVID is a business and a racket, as in modern America the difference between a business and a racket is hard to tell. As soon as COVID-19 became known to us, the race was on to exploit the situation at the expense of the public. Politicians used it to turn themselves into petty tyrants and scolds. Big business saw it as a way to eliminate the competition, and their financiers saw the chance to increase their skim.
You see this in the news stories about the retailers and restaurants closing due to the COVID panic. It is the best of times for the retail oligarchs like Walmart, Target, and Amazon, while the smaller players are going bust. The chain restaurants have figured out how to implement “contactless delivery” and other mechanisms to comport with the ever-changing regulations, while the little guys have all closed.