What became clear already in the early days of the pandemic was that the virus could produce serious health conditions that might result in long-term negative effects on human health or even in death, especially among the elderly population and those with pre-existing health conditions. As of December 1, 2021, according to the Corona Virus Resource Center of John Hopkins University, there were 263,059,445 confirmed cases of infection globally and 5,220,060 deaths¹ caused by the virus or complications resulting from the infection. Given that in many cases, there were no recognizable symptoms of infection or that symptoms were mild and did not require substantial medical treatments, it is reasonable to suppose that the actual number of those infected is significantly higher than the officially confirmed (tested) cases. Assuming that as of Fall 2021, there were around 7.9 billion people in the world, that would mean that around 3.3% of the global population was infected by the virus (based on the number of confirmed cases) and that mortality among the infected was around 2%.² This, of course, is just one possible approximation, given the series of obstacles in trying to calculate both the number of infected (the total number is virtually unknowable), and the cause of death (given, for instance, the pre-existing health conditions that are sometimes worsened by the Covid infection, so that the patient dies weeks or even months after he/she has recovered from the acute Covid infection). Nevertheless, this approximation gives us some orientation in terms of the danger of this pandemic compared to the past ones. When these data are compared with available statistics for past pandemics, it is clear that the Covid-19 pandemic is significantly less severe, even if the actual mortality rate is slightly higher compared to the above given figure.³ Although the virus is much more serious than seasonal influenza (especially for certain segments of the population), the character of the pandemic has been compared to previous influenza pandemics⁴ (even though the infection of Covid-19 can produce more serious health conditions and complications, with long-term effects).

The fact that the virus is serious and yet not as contagious or lethal as viruses can be, makes the measures implemented across the world in response to the virus particularly interesting to analyze in order to investigate the ways in which these measures were, to a large extent, ideologically framed, and in order to understand how the measures reflect more general assumptions about our social conduct today.

Serious restrictions on peoples’ freedoms imposed by governments ranged from limiting movement during specific days or hours, preventing travel outside of one's district/region, to total lockdowns, during which people were essentially kept under a form of generally imposed house arrest. According to some reports, already in late April 2020, about a third of the world population was under lockdown.⁶

Almost two years since the outbreak of the pandemic, one can compare the number of cases and deaths in countries with total lockdowns, countries with more relaxed policies, and countries with no lockdowns and little or virtually no restrictions, to see that extremely repressive measures alone had dubious, if any effects, in so far as the goal was to protect human lives and health.⁷ There were, however, other important effects of lockdowns and the threat of police oppression—the rise of many other acute conditions or the worsening of existing chronic diseases. Prolonged lockdowns are linked to serious damage to people's mental health, the rise of anxiety, depression, alcohol consumption and family violence.⁸ The imposition of restrictive measures also contributed to a higher risk of developing chronic diseases such as cardiovascular ones and the worsening of already existing health conditions.⁹

What is more, often inconsistent and even paradoxical policies resulted in the lowering of peoples’ trust in public institutions and the officially imposed measures. The lost trust in official institutions and policies is often compensated by alternative interpretations and theories, including those that can be described as “conspiracy theories.”

Some countries, most notably Sweden, opted for a different approach. At the beginning of the pandemic, British journalist Guy Birchall noticed that “With most of Europe imposing extraordinary restrictions to slow the spread of coronavirus, Sweden has left its citizens surprisingly free. Are Swedes rolling the dice with their public health or is everyone else overreacting?”¹⁰ It quickly became clear that the strategy that Swedish authorities applied—with a wide public support—was probably the only meaningful response to this kind of pandemic.¹¹ As state epidemiologist Anders Tengell pointed out, “As long as the Swedish epidemic development stays at this level … I don't see any big reason to take measures that you can only keep up for a very limited amount of time.”¹² Moreover, Tengell correctly saw that introducing measures of little or uncertain efficacy, including lockdowns, could not be implemented over a long period of time without harming people even more than they would be harmed by the pandemic. He was skeptical (correctly, as it turned out) about the models developed by the Imperial College London, which were used to justify lockdown strategies,¹³ and he also warned against the strategy of imposing lockdowns abruptly and then lifting the restrictions once the numbers start going down: “We try to put measures in place that are sustainable over time, instead of jumping from an extremely high level of measures to no measures at all … Lifting and closing things is really detrimental to trust and will also have a lot more negative effects than keeping some kind of level of measures all the time. Opening and closing schools, for example, would be disastrous.”¹⁴

It is, however, also true that this whole strategy rested on the responsibility of Swedish citizens to follow the suggested measures. Swedish prime minister Stefan Lofven called upon all citizens to behave responsibly in the new situation: “We all, as individuals, have to take responsibility. We can't legislate and ban everything.”¹⁵ Birchall notices that

It seems that Sweden is among very few countries, which has gone through the pandemic without giving up on democracy altogether, and with a fairly high level of respect for human rights and the rights of its citizens, measured by comparative standards. Swedish authorities have resisted the enormous pressure coming from the Western (primarily United States and United Kingdom) media to impose more radical measures at the beginning of the pandemic, and the Swedish government remained isolated in its refusal to impose any measures for which there was no constitutional basis, those that would contradict democratic principles or those whose effectiveness was questionable, adhering at the same time to the maturity and responsibility of its citizens to implement the recommended measures wherever possible.

The result, after two years of the pandemic, is that the so-called “excess mortality” in Sweden in the relevant period is among the lowest in Europe.

In the absence of a well-thought strategy to fight the pandemic, and probably driven by panic, and the need to show that they were doing something, governments across the world were trying to depict themselves as those who were both “in charge” of the situation (which they were not), and as those with “a plan” (which they didn't have). In addition to being grossly underprepared for a pandemic, many governments were also confronted with tremendous pressure from the media to impose measures that had been imposed elsewhere, no matter how (in)effective or even harmful they might be. Once a certain strategy was “canonized” in the media as the way to respond to the crisis, regardless of the short- and long-term (negative) consequences, it was preferred to all other attempts to find alternative or better ways of responding to the crisis.¹⁷

After the initial confusion, many governments quickly seized the opportunity, which presented itself with the pandemic, to the advantage of political or business elites. This is well captured in a remark on the situation in the Balkans during the pandemic: “Most countries’ governments have conveniently used these restrictions as an excuse for shortcomings in good governance, transparency, and accountability as well as to limit civil society's involvement in crisis response mechanisms.”¹⁸ What can be seen in Southern Europe can also be seen in many other countries. Even Freedom House, a pro-US government organization,¹⁹ in its Special Report “Democracy under Lockdown,” could not but notice a variety of abuses of human rights and democratic institutions by governments, including in the United States. The report, prepared by Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz, points to electoral disruption, legislative meeting interruption, media restrictions, restrictions on protests, detention/arrest and police violence as the key types of government abuses.²⁰

Prolonged lockdowns and police brutality eventually provoked civil unrest and protests across Western Europe. Germany had severe measures that kept people in lockdown for many months, with the police monitoring the strict implementation of the measures. When citizens finally rebelled against conditions which some of them compared with living under “dictatorship,” the response of the police was brutal; many were beaten up, seriously injured and arrested.²¹

Not only Germany but many other countries that belong to the “Western hemisphere,” and that often preach about their commitment to democracy and human rights, used unusually harsh, repressive measures against the “perpetrators” that reflect the mentality of a police state. Australia was among the countries with severe restrictions, limiting not only the freedom of movement internally, but also banning its citizens from leaving the country, and prohibiting its citizens from returning to Australia from certain regions, under the threat of criminal penalties.²²

Make no mistake, Gesundheit macht frei!

Important in these repressive measures against the general population was the use (and abuse) of digital technologies under the pretexts of anti-pandemic measures. The pandemic was an opportunity to maximize on the use of surveillance measures. Under the pretext of fighting the pandemic, private cell phones were used to track people's exact position, their movement and interactions with other human beings. This was well captured in an article “When Tools fo...