We know the elitist media were the biggest supporter of this lockdown poo-poo, but how did it fare in public opinion surveys?
A poll of U.S. adults conducted by the Pew Research Center from April 7-12, 2020, revealed that more upper-income respondents feared COVID-19 restrictions would be lifted too quickly. A nationwide poll from April 17-26 conducted by PureSpectrum showed high-income Americans were more likely to follow more extreme COVID protocols—but lower income groups were more likely to follow commonsense measures like washing hands. This poll said high income groups also generally supported more restrictive policies. A whopping 79 percent of those who earned at least $200,000 a year said they strongly approved of stay-at-home orders. An earlier poll said 50 percent of those in the highest income group supported stay-at-home orders, while only 39 percent of the lowest income group supported them. It has been pointed out, however, that many polls exist not to measure public opinion but to shape it. Media elites had stunning success at whipping up support for lockdown culture. (A CBS/YouGov poll on COVID in June 2021 had three categories for respondents’ political views: “moderate”, “conservative”, and “not sure.” Notice what’s missing.)
The fact that lockdowns had as much support as they did is a smoking gun that the media manipulated public opinion. There’s simply no way this could happen otherwise. It was also like this with other issues even before the pandemic.
Words speak as loudly as polls, and militant classism and credentialism loomed large among COVID catastrophists. As Kentucky’s incompetent “leaders” kept imposing blanket closures of bars and other small businesses, a newspaper article appeared about a bartender in Dayton, Kentucky, who worked around the closures by serving drinks at her home. When the article was posted in a local Facebook group, somebody shot back with this heaping pile of classist garbage: “Uneducated, lower income class people breed more than anyone else. Which means this type of ignorance is perpetuated from generation to generation. They [sic] same people who support this woman’s selfish ignorance also claim that ‘they are not sheep’ and yet religiosity and large families/low income all go hand in hand.”
Classism was used to defend not only lockdowns but also the closely related and long-running mask hoopla that media elites frolicked in. In May 2021, users of the Cincinnati forum on Reddit noted that Kroger grocery stores were not enforcing the company’s demand that customers wear masks—and that many patrons shopped barefaced. However, somebody replied that almost all customers wore masks at the Kroger in the affluent suburb of Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. This generated a typically snotty response: “Well yeah Ft. Mitchell has rich people. Rich people know how to act like adults.” By contrast, I had witnessed that usually about 20 to 40 percent of fellow customers at my local Kroger were unmasked. A reviewer on Google sniffed that there were “always tons of morons not wearing a mask in the store.” Imagine falling asleep in 2019 and waking up two years later to see people complaining because Kroger customers didn’t wear masks.
One professional opinion haver posted on Twitter, “Why do all the antivaxxers/anti-maskers get themselves arrested at Applebee’s, Burger King...never any serious restaurants. What does it all mean?” Not only is this blurb classist, but it also wrongly equates opposing mask mandates with opposing all vaccines. This was an intentional propaganda technique designed to smear foes of the “new normal” in general.
The media generally does not cater to the working class but to the well-off. Someone on Twitter noted that the message of the New York Times generally was, “Have your groceries delivered.” That’s because workers who actually delivered groceries were not the paper’s target audience. A Reddit user said there were financially secure work-from-home workers “crying for stricter lockdowns as they know their job isn’t going anywhere.”
In the United States, one of the biggest predictors of whether a state, county, or city would enact lockdowns or embrace lockdown culture was its wealth. All things considered, its historic partisan preference wasn’t much of a predictor. Yet urban areas were worse than rural areas. Big cities were worse than small towns. Blue-collar neighborhoods did better than white-collar. Average personal income though was less of a predictor than average rent. Perhaps it’s because rich urban areas had more people to boss around than rich rural areas. In the cities, there was a strong link between gentrification and COVID mania. One may also argue that there would naturally be more interest in restrictions in urban areas because of what seemed to be a link between population density and the virus’s spread, but in reality, the prevalence of restrictions in cities did not always match the situation at hand.
Many of America’s rural communities—especially small towns in the Midwest with an industrial or agricultural economic base—were rather relaxed. However, one type of small community with some of the heaviest restrictions was ski towns.
A Johns Hopkins University study released in January 2021 said that the richer you were, the more likely you were to adhere to social distancing and mask mandates. The highest income group was as much as 54 percent more likely than the lowest income group to follow these diktats.
These reports wouldn’t be complete if they didn’t mention that some people must have supported totalitarian measures even when they knew these rules would apply to themselves. They seem to have been saying, “Spank me harder, Mommy!” This was one of very few periods in history in which people demanded less freedom. A Reddit commenter observed, “I can’t believe there are people who actually like their lives ruined by the restrictions.”
As an example of this strange phenomenon, someone on the Winnipeg board on Reddit said, “There has to be some kind of call in campaign we can do to ensure another lockdown.” If the first lockdown was so successful, why did they need another? Plus, why should such a small group of complainants get to exercise so much control over such a far-reaching policy? They made it sound like it was just like calling up a radio station to vote for a favorite Michael Jackson record for the nightly countdown.
Similarly, after one of the many instances in which the CDC expanded its mask recommendations, someone on Reddit grouched, “Sick of this recommend shit. REQUIRE!!!! REQUIRE!!!!!!!” The CDC isn’t intended to be a legislative body, brainiac.