"COVID is the perfect virus for neoliberal, atomized societies and especially for the sharply polarized US. Since the fall of the in 1989, and the utopian dreams of open societies in the aftermath, nations around the world have built more, not less, walls, and currently there are over 70 sizable border walls worldwide. In the midst of the , when international cooperation is critical, alliances are unraveling, and nations are building walls between one another. Donald “America First” Trump has pulled out of the and withdrew from the . Divisions form not only between nations, but within nations themselves. This is dramatically evident in the US, where Trump abdicated federal oversight and leadership of the COVID-19 crisis, states were forced to compete with one another for medical supplies and many erected border checkpoints to keep out citizens from neighboring states. The culture wars dividing conservatives and liberals for decades have intensified to draw battle lines now between those who wear MAGA hats and those who don protective masks. As well, COVID-19 has frayed important lines of family and community connections among individuals, forced people into isolated and sanitized zones of solipsism that breed depression and mental illness."