Hitchens here does what few have thus far been able to do: correctly diagnose COVID-ism as a new religion. This explains why the converts to this fundamentalist doctrine are impervious to reason. Religious fanatics never care about facts, and will ignore them. Another thing: history shows us that facts are not the all-powerful disinfectant that many of us naively believe them to be. A totalitarian fundamentalist creed could murder 100 million innocents before being overturned by “the facts”. The people around us also are not as easily swayed by reason and research as we’d like to believe. Instead, they are just one good peer-pressured nudge into supporting and complying with a new fascism, indoctrinating their children into the cult, and joining in the moblike pogrom against heretics. Just look at the venom spewed at those who oppose lockdowns and masks. These people, millions of them, are on the precipice of throwing their support behind a total police state. It should be far more terrifying to us.
