A pandemic of illiberalism
It was easy for governments to invoke Covid fears to concentrate power, rule without restraint, and suppress basic liberties.
It was easy.
That is the main lesson in the Western response to Covid.
It wasn’t easy to prevent the virus’ transmission or reduce mortality. Since seasonal and geographic variation, the age structure of populations, and the prevalence of risk factors like obesity were dominant drivers of the pandemic, it is still not clear if public policy made much difference at all. In the United States, Covid reached its end as a pandemic thanks to herd immunity and vaccines.
But it was easy to use Covid fears to justify extraordinary steps that enabled governments to exercise unrestrained power and trample basic civil rights.
It was easy to extend temporary emergency measures first adopted for the specific purpose of protecting health systems by “flattening the curve.” As Michael Betrus recounts, even as the original rationale faded, lockdowns became permanent in many places, shutting down businesses, schools, and churches for long periods in all but five U.S. states (and most European countries). For the sake of “preventing transmission” and “saving lives,” various governments claimed special powers to restrict freedom of movement, assembly, and worship, and to suspend children’s right to an adequate education. While some sought support from legislatures, others, including a number of U.S. governors, ruled by fiat. “Covid mania” made liberty a “nuisance.”
It was easy to adopt all sorts of unprecedented policies that infringed on basic liberties. Lockdowns limiting attendance at funerals at ten or less caused “grief upon grief.” After California closed its beaches, Malibu authorities arrested a paddleboarder who refused to leave the ocean, the danger of which was accentuated by a Scripps scientist who warned that it “churns up all kinds of particulate and microscopic pathogens, and every time the ocean sneezes with a big wave or two, it sprays these particles into the air.” The American Centers for Disease Control presumed to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium in rental housing in order, it said, “to prevent the further spread of Covid 19.” An American state university suspended three students for appearing maskless in a photo taken at an off-campus party. A Dutch ministry turned out to have spent funds on the epidemic never authorized by parliament, undermining a “cornerstone of the democratic system.” Late in the pandemic, with votes in parliament, the Dutch government also imposed an evening curfew, preventing people from even leaving their homes, though generously revising an early proposal to start at 9:00 p.m. by allowing citizens an extra hour of license.
It was easy to invoke scary models and ignore contrary evidence in order to keep restrictive policies in place. When from Minnesota to London the models turned out to be woefully useless, or when evidence accumulated that strict lockdowns had little net effect on the course of the disease and could not “control” the coronavirus, that did not cause any political mea culpas. When evidence showed, from the first, that Covid mostly affected the old, sick, and obese, that did not modulate the general suppression measures in favor of protecting the most vulnerable. When Germany did well in the early phase of Covid, it was praised; when it turned out not to have “contained” the virus but instead experienced major winter and spring spikes, and as of June 2021 trailed both the U.S and the U.K. in vaccination rates, no lessons were drawn from the country’s apparent failure. Though it did not immediately affect policy, the conventional approach to Covid’s origins further illustrates the lack of serious debate on a range of issues: scientists peddled a premature consensus with little evidence, dismissing alternative views as “conspiracy theories,” and at no point did leading experts like health bureaucrat Anthony Fauci in the U.S., though well aware of a Wuhan laboratory leak as a possible cause, encourage critical, transparent inquiry into all plausible hypotheses. When it came to Covid, the open society wasn’t that open.
It was easy to shut down schools. In the United States, equity in education had been a major liberal cause for decades, and many state constitutions enshrined children’s right to an adequate education. Both the cause and the right proved discardable. Even as data early on showed no significant Covid transmission by or harm to school children, and as many private schools and Republican-led school systems reopened more quickly without ill effect, other American jurisdictions, like Georgia’s DeKalb County, kept schools closed to in-person teaching well into spring 2021, and some teachers unions opposed speedy resumption of regular instruction, for example by resisting a district reopening plan in Chicago for several months. It was easy to avoid accountability for the injustice done to the most vulnerable young.
It was easy to get support for the restrictive policy approach in major media. In the U.S., after first playing down the threat of Covid, they quickly shifted to boost the dominant narrative, eagerly featuring new cases in a “daily drumbeat” of “misreporting.” Promoting expert counsel against mask use one month, they suddenly presented a new consensus in favor the next. In America, one thing did not change: it was especially easy to slant Covid coverage more negatively, even during periods when cases were declining, as a way to badger the Trump administration. Less restrictive policies at the state level were vilified—for example, by tarring Georgia’s early efforts at reopening as an “experiment in human sacrifice,” and calling Florida Governor DeSantis a “covid-19 catastrophe,” “even by Florida standards,” for opposing lockdowns and favoring more tailored protection. Dissenting voices were easily sidelined. In one case out of many, when the same Florida governor—a prime media target throughout the pandemic—convened a roundtable in which academics cast doubt on mask-wearing for children, YouTube removed a recording of it on the grounds that it failed to heed expert “consensus.” Easy enough.
Sure, there was pushback. The American legal system provided some recourse: the U.S. Supreme Court told California it violated constitutional rights by imposing harsher restrictions on religious gatherings than on other kinds, federal courts struck down the CDC rental policy as blatantly unconstitutional overreach, and the Wisconsin State Supreme Court ruled against the governor’s unilateral emergency measures, such as a state-wide mask mandate. Californians organized a recall effort against Governor Gavin Newsom, still ongoing. Here and there, protests erupted—all easily dealt with. A few major news outlets, such as the Wall Street Journal editorial pages, featured heterodox thoughts. Online, a fair amount of skepticism emerged, but with modest effect at best. Sweden notoriously resisted the lure of lockdowns.
But in most Western countries, it was easy to exploit fear and panic to impose expensive, disruptive, and oppressive policies with no commensurate impact on public health, in a way that often concentrated power, subverted checks and balances, and trampled basic rights. Against the pandemic of illiberalism, the liberal social order had no immunity. Rather than boosting its immune response, major media promoted the illiberalism and tech platforms limited dissent. Rather than fostering vigorous debate and open inquiry on the most controversial issues, many experts and academics endorsed a party line.
Long after Covid becomes just another endemic viral disease, the pandemic of illiberalism will still afflict the body politic. For that virus there is no vaccine.