There are many illustrations of these shifts. The ACLU argued during the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009 that forcing workers to choose between getting a jab or losing their job “is coercive, invasive and unjustifiably intrudes upon their fundamental rights,” but now supports COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

When New Yorkers were first becoming concerned about the virus spreading in Wuhan, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his underlings urged city residents to visit Chinatown. “There is no reason to avoid public settings, including subways and—most of all—our city’s famous Chinese restaurants and small businesses,” NYC Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot said in a city-hall press release. “While it is understandable for some New Yorkers to feel concerned about the novel coronavirus situation, we cannot stand for racist and stigmatizing rhetoric, or for myths and half-truths about the virus.” De Blasio wound up requiring vaccination for various indoor activities. Now he has mandated vaccines for teachers and is considering expanding the requirement to encompass the city’s police officers and firefighters.

Changing your mind is sometimes prudent as new information emerges. But however the left came to accept travel restrictions, stay-at-home orders, and mandates, Douthat posited, “the bare acknowledgment that this weird flip took place might help a little with our polarization—tempering the liberal sense that the right is just a pro-Covid death cult and the right’s sense that the left wants us all to mask up and eat Soylent in our disease-free habitats forever.”