It is not enough for an argument to be strong and valid to be persuasive.

Human beings are not always logical.

Religious beliefs, cultural beliefs and biases can be to hard to overcome.

Therefore, many statements and policies, backed up by weak and flawed arguments, can persuade the mass, leveraging on their fear (e.g. fear of death), their biases (e.g. anthropocentric bias, teleological bias, action bias, etc.) and their naive thinking.

Selling a virus as “enemy” is easy, owing to the anthropocentric bias. An ecological view will easily dismiss the concept of “enemy.

Selling lockdown (even if unreasonable and harmful) is easy when there is an “invisible Enemy”. Shut down is naive concept for the mass.

Doing something instead of doing nothing is a persuasive concept, owing to the actions bias.