Pandemic Nightmares

Conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic are legion and sometimes go like this (I have heard such theories more than once): governments everywhere, avid as governments by their very nature always are, for increasing their power and control over their populations, have seized the opportunity presented by the epidemic to impose drastic restrictions on freedom, in the process destroying economies so that they have to be rescued by indebtedness. This in turn will inevitably lead both to higher taxation and increased government participation in, and regulation of, economic life. And, of course, once powers are taken by governments they are rarely, and only slowly or reluctantly, relinquished.

The wilder conspiracy theorists believe it was all planned from the outset, even that governments created the offending virus expressly for their nefarious purposes; the more moderate conspiracy theorists believe that governments have merely been opportunist. But the end result is the same: an inexorable slide into totalitarianism, all in the name of public health. Read Full Article »