Covid and the politics of panic

During Easter weekend four years ago, the country felt on the verge of catastrophe. The prime minister was in hospital having just come out of intensive care, the Covid-19 death toll was at more than 1,000 deaths a day, and hospitals were trying to cope with a flood of patients. It had been estimated that 90,000 ventilator beds would be needed; we had only 10,000. That weekend, no one went to church and no one visited family: instead we sat inside, preparing ourselves for the horror to come.

No one knew, then, that the virus was already in reverse. No one knew that 10,000 ventilators would prove enough or that the emergency Nightingale hospitals that had been set up would not be needed. The 20,000 extra ventilators, when they finally arrived, ended up on an MoD base. We didn’t know then – though we know now, too late – what damage lockdown would do to our children’s education, to the economy and to our entire culture.

In the early weeks, scientists were learning about the virus. So the crucial question is why their discoveries weren’t acted on. Long after it was known that the virus didn’t spread in the open air and that it posed minimal risk to the young, nonsensical restrictions were placed on the public. Instead of ‘following the science’, politicians and policy makers became entrenched in their most fearful positions.

Covid exposed the frailty of our democratic safeguards. The opposition refused to challenge the government, even when its intervention was most needed. The police were given powers to hound the most vulnerable people in society, while parliament voted away its right to scrutinise. Many journalists came to see it as their job to promote the government’s public health message, too.