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2020-

2020-10-01 a
THE COVID-CON I

Covid and the collapse of reason

How we got here, and how we might get back to normality.

On 23 March, Boris Johnson locked down the country. It would last for three weeks, he said, and it had one simple aim: to prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed by Covid cases. Six months on, where are we? A quarter of the population is still under lockdown. The rest of us are living under the most stringent social rules in living memory. Students in Scotland and Manchester are locked in their halls of residence and are prevented by actual police officers from going outside, visiting a pub or returning to their family home. Riot police are violently shutting down anyone who protests against this new authoritarianism, as we witnessed in Trafalgar Square on Saturday. And the economy is in freefall: we are heading for the largest recession on record, with millions of jobs on the line.

How has this happened? How did we go from a three-week effort to protect the NHS from a sudden spike in coronavirus cases to a forever lockdown; to the reorganisation of political, social and economic life around a novel virus; to a situation where fresher students are putting signs saying ‘HELP’ on the windows of their dorm rooms fearful they will be arrested if they leave? This question needs urgent answering. Because the only way we will get out of this crisis – this crisis of freedom, of autonomy, and of reason itself – is if we know how we got into it. Understanding the origins of this unprecedented reorganisation of the relationship between the state and society is essential if we are to find a way back to normality.

If we were to assess the state of the nation right now, we would find that it is not good. Liberty, democracy and reasoned discussion have all suffered greatly over the past six months. We now live in a nation where arbitrary rules are introduced by government decree. (read more)

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