Increasingly, it appears to me that the bizarre, unprecedented, and unscientific response to Covid-19 may well be the brainchild of Silicon Valley.
The Tech sector has been suggesting for quite some time that massive job losses were going to be inevitable in the near future across most sectors of the economy due to technological innovation. Some form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) had been discussed as a potential pacifying measure to offset public outrage at the eventuality of widespread unemployment, with figures like Democratic candidate for the Presidency Andrew Yang including it in his platform, and proponents of some abstract version of Socialism, like Alexandria Ocassio Cortez pushing the idea of paying people to not work under the pretext of public health concerns. Both Yang and AOC are largely financed by Big Tech It is even conceivable that the re-emergence of the demand for reparations for slavery might coincide with a new policy of universal welfare in preparation for the mass lay-offs to come.
It seems as though the pandemic presented an ideal opportunity for imposing, with drastic speed, what elites viewed as inevitable; the conditions for the New Economy as envisioned in the bubble of Silicon Valley. It is, as it were, a ripping off of the band-aid.
They are implementing measures that would otherwise risk severe public backlash and civil unrest were they undertaken without the fog of crisis.