The reason is eschatological. The optimists are pushing for lockdown because they believe that, sooner or later, the cavalry will come and rescue us: a vaccine, or mass testing the like of which begins trials in Liverpool this week, or something else. The pessimists are objecting to lockdown because they think the vaccine may be a mirage, mass testing has been overpromised and underdelivered several times already, and we cannot place our hope in a Micawberish belief that something will turn up.

That dynamic is as old as the hills. Fears about the future make us want to “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Hope for the future makes us more prepared to endure hardship in the present, for “if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”