> I honestly believe that there is a non-trivial percentage of the population that _likes_ the COVID world and wants to keep it going as long as possible.
I believe two factors at play can be identified:
1) Among ordinary internet users, the “stay home and save lives” recommendation in spring of last year became highly memetic, and although the median age of death is now there for anyone to learn, the blanket admonishment continues to be rather unthinkingly repeated across society even though in many countries the lockdown is really starting to bite the economy. It is not that people consciously like the COVID world, they are simply perpetuating the social pressures that formed at the outbreak of the epidemic a year ago. (It doesn’t help that often one cannot public take an anti-lockdown stance and participate in street protests, because then one risks being lumped in with the anti-vaxxers and 5G crazies that tend to be so visible at those protests.)
2) Elected officials cannot ease off the restrictions, because the opposition will immediately accuse them of killing grandma or whatever. In this case, the opposition may in fact be acting much like a “concern troll”; they might not really care about the elderly (and deep down, they themselves might be thirsting for an end to lockdown), but they cannot ignore the political point-scoring that they could do with such a position.