"Why isn't everyone a morally pure collectivist like me, and how can we fix that?"
And the answer is: because you're not morally pure, the "common causes" you want us to unite behind are exaggerated and collectivism has a track record of being far more deadly than the things it's trying to solve. But that answer wouldn't be ideologically acceptable to academia.
It's a bit like when we have AI papers that anthropomorphize their model by saying they benefit from "dreaming". This is true among the community of experts that actually work on the topic, it is simply irrelevant or downright misleading for a more "public" audience.
Likewise, many groups with minimal differences, i.e. group think, may still fight intensely over those small differences.
To be fair, the abstract is somewhat asking for it given this:
> Confronted with a deadly global pandemic that threatened not only massive loss of life but also the collapse of our medical system and economy, why were we unable to put partisan divisions aside and unite in a common cause, similar to the national mobilization in the Great Depression and the Second World War?
The world is complex and while trying to model that complexity is an interesting problem, this kind of statement (by a co-author) falls short of my expectations for rigorous scientific communication and vulgarization:
> “If we reach that point, we cannot unite even in the face of war, climate change, pandemics, or other challenges to the survival of our society.”