Collective insanity would, almost by definition, be a chaotic, ungovernable, mix of various beliefs, and ideas with no guarantee that any given idea would not compete with any other given idea... It would be to believe that inmates in an insane asylum could unionize and appoint which one of them gets to be Napoleon.

What we are seeing is a collective set of beliefs around which a lot of people are, indeed, unifying.

To understand the existence of this large, unified, group of people who belive in things that are not to be believed, one must understand a modern American koan: Even the racist doesn't like being called racist.

It's not as simple as a smoke-screen or mere deflection. It's much deeper than that: long held cultural norms and delegitimized beliefs, no matter how bizarre, otherwise unacceptable, or discredited, inculcated and stamped with the impramatur of 'history' or 'tradition' has warped the very fabric of narrative. This is a potent force that can't take it's real name--racism. It is an unacceptable emotion searching for an acceptable label. That such a search is patently futile sets up an inner conflict: which conflict is, itself, denied in the name of partisanship and on behalf of amoral and feckless people like Trump, Senators Hawley and Cruz, among others.

And, you are right, the pandemic doesn't help.