The Covid trap: will society ever open up again?

The great pandemic of 2020 has led to an extraordinary expansion of government power. Countries rushed to close their borders and half of the world’s population were forced into some sort of curfew. Millions of companies, from micropubs to mega corporations, were prohibited from carrying on business. In supposedly free and liberal societies, peaceful strollers and joggers were tracked by drones and stopped by policemen asking for their papers. It’s all in the name of defeating coronavirus; all temporary, we’re told. But it’s time to ask, just how temporary? As Milton Friedman used to warn: ‘Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government programme.’

Measures that seemed unthinkable a few months ago have been implemented in haste and without debate. In the UK, as in many other countries, the rationale changed. First, lockdown was designed to ‘buy time’ so the health service could prepare. Next, it was needed to ‘flatten the curve’.