So...your theory is that politicians are all evil and they just want to lock people up. They would have done it in 2019, but they had no excuse. In 2021, once COVID blows over, they'll probably just round up all the citizens and throw them in jail?
Ok I'll bite. What's the conspiracy theory why Bibi is locking down Israel?
Don't know what all the angles are, but the Nashville example is very telling. Certainly in Nashville, you see it was systemic, not an isolated individual. It happened there and they were caught, one can imagine there are loads of additional instances that were not caught. And no, I don't think evil is the root of it. There are reasons beyond the below list and there is overlap between them, but here are some suggestions:
1. Politicians / alarmist scientists don't want to be wrong. The public will ignore them if they are, so they need to double down on the path they have staked. A for instance is that the rationale for the closing down of society was the model that shown 2.2M deaths in the US. Noone backtracked on the basis of that model being wrong. (this is just an example, if you don't agree the models were wrong, as some previously argued on this forum, then this is not a good example)
2. They don't want to be second guessed in hindsight on the hugely damaging decisions they made to close down society.
3. Politicians / alarmist scientists do not want to be blamed. It is much easier to justify mandating extreme cautious safeguards in the spirit of "out of an abundance of caution", while it is hard to get stuck with blame for the unintended consequences of such actions. If 2000 lives were saved by a mandate, while the unintended consequences can be blamed for 2000 dying, the politician / cautious alarmist scientist may choose the mandate, even if the mandate includes hardships beyond the death toll. The flip side is equally true. It is much easier to blame the straight up death toll from a disease on the politician who did not take extreme measures to prevent it and much more difficult for that politician to defend such a decision based on the unintended consequences and death toll of implementing extreme measures. The President claims that was the basis for his reaction to the Wuhan reports, yet look how many are placing blame on him for the 200k COVID deaths in the US.
4. Ego
5. Power trip - Being able to tell people what to do is why some got into politics.
