30/11/2021 10:21 As restrições da Covid já duram muito tempo | O espectador

Brendan O'Neill

As restrições da Covid
duram muito tempo

30 de novembro de 2021, 3h30

Imagens Getty

ão podemos continuar assim. Não podemos continuar a

N
ressuscitar as restrições sempre que surge uma nova variante
da Covid. Não podemos continuar suspendendo certas
liberdades sempre que este maldito vírus sofre mutação. De alguma
forma, ficamos presos em uma espiral de desgraça e autoritarismo
automático, e precisamos urgentemente encontrar uma maneira de sair
disso.

People of course will say it’s only mask-wearing in shops and on buses

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30/11/2021 10:21 As restrições da Covid já duram muito tempo | O espectador

People, of course, will say it s only mask-wearing in shops and on buses.

It’s only a PCR test if you’re coming back from overseas. It’s only

mandatory quarantine if you come into contact with someone infected

with the Omicron variant. These are hardly onerous regulations. And
Boris says they’ll be temporary. They will be reviewed in three weeks’
time. So calm down, yeah?

This misses the point. First, because if the past 20 months tell us
anything, it is that temporary Covid regulations have a nasty habit of
lasting for longer than we were told they would. Lockdowns linger,
emergency laws stick around, Sadiq Khan tells Londoners to carry on
masking up on public transport regardless of what central government
says.

One Sage adviser – professor Susan Michie, unsurprisingly – says social

distancing should last forever. So, yes, we have good reason to fear that
these three weeks of fairly mild regulations to tackle the Omicron
variant will morph into something more.

Secondly, and more importantly, there’s the question of what impact all
this sudden shunting back into restrictions is having on society and the
individual. It is incredibly psychologically disorientating to know you
could wake up on any given day and have fewer freedoms than you did
the day before. It makes it impossible to plan ahead and even to live as a
properly free citizen in the here and now.

Forget the actual restrictions themselves. It is this permanent threat of

restrictions, this knowledge that liberty could be snatched away at a
moment’s notice, that is having a palpably destructive impact on the
culture of freedom in the UK right now.

The government’s response to Omicron confirms that the Damocles

sword of Covid authoritarianism hangs over us still, and presumably
will for a while to come. This eerie culture of imminent regulation has
given rise to a situation where we never quite know where we stand.

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Not knowing if you can afford that trip abroad after all, once PCR tests
are factored in. Not knowing what parts of the world might suddenly be
declared off-limits. Not knowing if we’ll be able to visit far-flung family
members. Not knowing if Christmas will go ahead or be cancelled. Not
knowing if we will soon be told to work from home, and if this might
mean some people losing their jobs. Not knowing if hospitality will stay
mask-free or even stay open.

We just don’t know. Government underestimates at its peril how

dispiriting it is to live in a society where, come tomorrow, you don’t
quite know what you’ll be allowed to do, where you’ll be allowed to go,
who you’ll be allowed to hug. It makes people feel that they are no
longer the masters of their own destinies. And they aren’t, thanks to the
always present shadow of regulation.

The government and many of its expert advisers seem to be hooked on

worst-case-scenario thinking. Yes, there is still much we don’t know
about Omicron. But there are reasons to be relatively optimistic that it
won’t whack Britain in the same way previous Covid outbreaks did.

For one, more than 90 per cent of British adults are thought to have
Covid antibodies. Also, one of the South African doctors who first
spotted Omicron says the symptoms in patients have been mostly mild
so far. We should remain alert, of course, but all those doom-
mongering headlines and the rush to restrict everyday life seem over-
the-top – driven more by panic than by a cool, measured analysis of the
situation.

There will be new variants of Covid for a long time to come. This is
what viruses do; they mutate. Panicking in response to every variant is a
recipe for ceaseless doom, for suspension after suspension of normality
and liberty.

We have fortified ourselves against Covid in an incredibly effective way,

through the vaccination programme So now let us behind this shield
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through the vaccination programme. So now let us, behind this shield
of vaccination, get back to life as we knew it. Some of us will get ill, of

course. I hate to break it to you but people have always got sick, and
they always will. It is not the government’s job to protect us from falling
ill.

We have to stop viewing each other, and ourselves, as potential vectors

of disease, as patients in waiting. It is diminishing us. It is turning us
from citizens who should be free to make decisions and weigh up risks
as we see fit into risky creatures who must be controlled. Right now, I’m
more scared of this manmade whirlwind of distrust and dread than I
am of Omicron.

WRITTEN BY

Brendan O’Neill

Brendan O’Neill is Spiked's chief politics writer

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