Jason Blakely at Harper’s Magazine:
Invoking science and data to resolve ethical and ideological controversies obscures the values and interests of particular groups and policymakers. Anyone governing in the name of data is still making judgments. When the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben suggested that emergency dictates reflected that the governing ethic in Western societies had become “bare life, and the fear of losing it,” thereby reflecting a politics that “values nothing more than survival,” he was criticized for recklessness. Yet he rightly intuited that much of the expert response to the pandemic was shaped by an unstated vision of what human life was ultimately about. The assertion made by officials that the pandemic simply dictated certain policy responses was a way of suppressing underlying ethical and political disagreements.
In this way, “the pandemic” served a governing function not unlike “the economy.” There was a bid—albeit never fully successful—at creating a social object to scientifically overcome ideological conflict in American politics.
more here.