Mick Hartley

Johan Norberg – we panicked our way into this situation. Now, how do we get out?

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’. But when the curve peaked a few weeks later, the restrictions didn’t merely stay in place, they were reinforced.

Is the science on face masks weak? No matter, let’s make them mandatory anyway. Is there any evidence that closing borders has any meaningful effect on slowing the spread of the virus? […]

But hang on, you might say, we’re living in unprecedented times — as politicians love to tell us — and they call for unprecedented action. But this pandemic is small by historical standards. Even now, the global number of deaths from Covid-19 is still lower than from the Hong Kong flu of 1968. But there was no lockdown, no mass school closures, nor did we throw ancient civil and economic liberties overboard. What’s new, this time, is our reaction, not the virus. Sooner or later we will face a worse pandemic or another devastating crisis. What would we be willing to sacrifice then?

The problem is that we have a weak government that was caught on the back foot. Johnson's initial instinct was to avoid lockdown, but then along came Neil Ferguson's doomsday prophecies – plus, every other major European country bar Sweden was enforcing draconian lockdown measures. What else was he going to do? It was that initial panic, sadly, that caused the biggest disaster – the transfer of the sick and elderly to care homes out of hospitals, to clear the beds that in the end weren't needed anyway. So now we have some of the worst Covid-19 figures anywhere – if we can trust the figures, which I sincerely doubt. And the government, aware of its poor record, can only flip-flop and go with a renewed lockdown every time the figures seem to worsen. The precautionary, safety-first outlook has become the government's overarching outlook, whatever social freedom needs sacrificing to get there.