Researchers have found that preventing COVID-19 deaths has been elevated to a “sacred value” in society, such that those who question pandemic restrictions are morally condemned. Meanwhile deaths, abuses of power, and public shaming that occur in the name of “preventing COVID” are deemed acceptable. The unprecedented restrictions placed upon Western civilizations in 2020 would likely have been met with protest a year earlier. But, when issued in the name of COVID-19 mitigation, people are more likely to accept what otherwise might be regarded as abuses of power, even when it leads to death, according to a team of researchers from the United States and New Zealand.[i] COVID-19 has become a highly visible, politicized, and publicized event, such that efforts to combat it have become moralized. Once something is elevated to the level of a sacred value, even questioning anything that goes against it can “elicit moral outrage, disapproval, and a desire …