Jan. 19, 2025
When COVID-19 first emerged as a health crisis in China five years ago, observers noted that authoritarian regimes – with their hostility toward whistleblowers and manipulation of data – facilitate the spread of disease. Within a few months, it became clear that disease also facilitates the spread of authoritarianism.
In Hungary, the virus was the pretext for Prime Minister Viktor Orban to establish a dictatorship on the model of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In Israel, the government’s decision to use cellphone data to track the movements of infected individuals quickly became a model for other states, with no scruples about the data they collected.
The pandemic provided an excuse for democratic governments around the world to obstruct opposition parties, close borders, limit trade and censor media to combat “false information.”
Remarkably, the tactics met with comparatively little resistance, partly because they were advertised as only temporary and partly because the concerns of civil libertarians paled next to calls to “flatten the curve.” But as the lockdowns of 2020 were extended from spring to summer and then to early fall, a process of normalization began to take hold.
In the U.S., Joe Biden accepted the Democratic nomination from his Delaware home after it became clear that holding a convention would pose unacceptable health risks. Effectively barred from campaigning by restrictions on public rallies (as well as fear among his aides that the 77-year-old nominee might contract the virus), he sought to mount a virtual campaign against an incumbent who wielded the emergency powers of government to aid his re-election. Donald Trump handily won again in November.
As civil liberties receded, big government grew. Unprecedented unemployment meant unprecedented increases in Medicaid rolls, jobless benefits, housing assistance and food stamps. It was left to Trump to preside over an expansion of the welfare state the likes of which Bernie Sanders could only have dreamed about a year earlier.
Nor did things change much after the lockdowns were lifted, as people remained reluctant to venture into restaurants, shops and planes – and less able to afford them. Millions of business failures and personal bankruptcies caused a financial crisis. Dozens of banks had to be nationalized. The government took stakes in every industry it rescued. By the time a vaccine was available, the damage had been done.
The developing world experienced the crisis severely. “Flattening the curve” made little sense in countries whose medical systems were already overwhelmed and underequipped. Social distancing was treated as a cruel and unenforceable joke in densely populated cities like Cairo and São Paulo.
The result was a frightful fatality rate. Then there were effects of the global depression on the world’s most vulnerable economies. The destruction of the maquiladora industries in Mexico quickly led to the collapse of state authority along the border, a vacuum filled by the cartels. By 2023, Trump had finally built his wall, backed by bipartisan congressional support.
At the outset of the crisis it may have seemed that progressive parties stood to benefit politically. The opposite proved true.
Environmental concerns seemed like idle luxuries when gas was cheap and CO² emissions plummeted along with economic activity. Demands for gun control and criminal-sentencing reform fell flat in the face of increasing crime. Trump’s repeated calls for getting America back to work resonated with rural and suburban voters, who thought they had less to fear from the virus.
A bellicose spirit also took hold. Economically damaged regimes such as Iran looked to offset domestic discontents with foreign adventures. Military enlistments rose everywhere, partly as a form of employment, partly out of fear. Among the paradoxes of the COVID-19 crisis was that it brought the world together as never before in a common experience of lockdowns and self-isolations while fragmenting it as never before into wary states and nervous neighbors.
Not everything was bleak. Adults read more books, paid closer attention to their spouses and children, called their aging parents more often, made more careful choices with their money, thought more deeply about what they really wanted in life. In time, that kind of spiritual deepening will surely pay its own dividends.
For now, America awaits the inauguration of its 46th president, Michael Richard Pence.
Bret Stephens is a columnist for The New York Times.
