Five years after lockdown, the world still refuses to reckon with its COVID-19 failures – The Mail & Guardian

Beach bans were forced by the government during South Africa’s lockdowns. (Photo by Darren Stewart/Gallo Images via Getty Images)

In the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns, the world finds itself at a crossroads.

While the immediate crisis has passed, a deeper reckoning, an honest and unflinching evaluation of the leadership failures, ethical breaches, and institutional betrayals that defined the global response to the pandemic, remains conspicuously absent.

At the recent Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in London, Dr Scott W Atlas posed a question that demands serious reflection: Why is there so little discussion about what may be the most profound collapse of governance and ethics in modern history?

Despite a weeklong gathering of political thinkers, scholars, and policymakers, a defining event of our era was scarcely mentioned. It was the proverbial elephant in the room, an omission as striking as it was telling.

And this silence, both at the conference and in broader public discourse, raises an urgent question: Why is the world so reluctant to confront the failures of its COVID-19 response?

For decades institutions in the West have been eroding. Incompetent and corrupt governments, partisan and misleading journalism, and educational institutions more concerned with ideological conformity than intellectual pursuit, have long been familiar grievances. The lockdowns however, did not merely highlight these shortcomings; it exposed a systemic collapse of leadership, ethics, and accountability on a global scale.

The mismanagement of COVID-19 was not merely a failure of policy; it was a moral and ethical catastrophe that inflicted radical harm. The imposition of lockdowns was not a decision made by the virus. It was made by human governments, and failed both in preventing deaths and the spread of infection. Worse still, these measures inflicted untold collateral damage.

Dr Atlas in his speech said that an independent comparative study of 34 countries, published in Scientific Reports in 2023, found that had the United States followed Sweden’s approach to COVID-19, by eschewing mass lockdowns in favour of targeted protection, 1.6 million fewer American deaths could have occurred.

Meanwhile, a study in the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control estimates that, over the next two decades, lockdown-induced unemployment alone will cause an additional 900,000 to 1.2 million deaths in the US. These are not statistics to be dismissed.

Regrettably, we do not have these statistics for South Africa, where they are likely to be much worse. Nevertheless, these are the human costs of complete political and institutional failure.

This was not simply a case of bureaucratic incompetence. It was a fundamental betrayal of public trust that has left institutions across the world facing a fundamental crisis of legitimacy.

Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the pandemic response was not merely the imposition of draconian restrictions, but the speed and ease with which they were accepted.

In the United States, a country whose founding documents declare that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”, those very rights were relinquished almost overnight, not through force but through willing, and mostly naïve compliance.

Propaganda and censorship

“Free” counties like the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and most of Europe, were equally willing to succumb and acquiesce without question.

What explains this?

The answer lies to a very large extent in the power of propaganda and censorship.

The public was subjected to a carefully orchestrated narrative, designed to create the illusion of scientific consensus in favour of lockdowns, masks, and mandates.

Dissenting voices were dismissed as dangerous, their perspectives silenced by tech giants, government agencies, and a media apparatus more concerned with enforcing orthodoxy than facilitating debate.

Yet propaganda alone does not fully explain the silence that persists today. There is another, more uncomfortable truth.

This is that many of the world’s most influential figures and institutions were complicit. In addition to most of the mainstream press, these include the World Health Organisation, the Gates Foundation, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease under Dr Anthony Fauci (earning a presidential pardon), and the Centres for Disease Control.

The true reason no one wants to talk about COVID-19

The reluctance to revisit the pandemic’s failures is not due to ignorance. It is not because the facts are unclear. It is because a reckoning would require an admission of responsibility, an acknowledgment that government officials, public health authorities, doctors, journalists, businesses, and even private citizens participated in policies that inflicted immense harm.

Many who positioned themselves as champions of science and morality in 2020 must now face the reality that they endorsed, enforced, or remained silent in the face of wholly irrational and destructive policies.

To acknowledge this would be to admit that they were wrong. That they failed. That they, whether out of fear, ideological loyalty, ignorance or simple cowardice, became complicit in a historic injustice.

And so, the world remains largely silent, eager to “move on”, to forget.

But forgetting is not an option.

To turn the page on what may be the greatest governance failure, and certainly the greatest incursion into civil liberty, of our time without an honest reckoning would not only eliminate the possibility of accountability, it would all but guarantee that similar abuses will happen again.

In the aftermath of authoritarian regimes and human rights violations throughout history, societies have sought truth commissions, formal acknowledgments, and mechanisms for justice. The COVID-19 era, marked by sweeping infringements on fundamental freedoms, deserves no less.

Without accountability, how can we hope to restore trust in our most beloved institutions?
Without truth, how can we ensure that future crises are not met with the same failures?

The calls for institutional reform are growing louder.

The political landscape is shifting, with figures like Donald Trump riding a wave of populist discontent, a rejection not only of woke, leftist policies, but of the media propaganda and cancel culture that defined the lockdown era.

The notion that no one could be held accountable for the shameful response to COVID-19 is also falsely tied to a complex mix of excuses like the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, the evolving science, political disagreements, and debates about the appropriate responses.

Political disruption alone is of course, not enough. As Dr Atlas said, simply replacing leadership without addressing the deeper crisis of institutional integrity will not restore public trust.

Ultimately, the survival of free societies does not depend on governments, institutions, or political movements. It depends on individuals. Individuals with free and open minds, who actually think for themselves. Individuals with intellectual rectitude and visceral fortitude.

It depends on those who are willing to speak the truth, even when it is uncomfortable or risky to do so. It depends on those who understand Mahatma Gandhi when he says: “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to face it.”

And in the face of history’s judgment, this moment is a test of us all.

The world cannot afford to let the failures of the COVID-19 era fade into obscurity, buried beneath political expedience and collective amnesia. The task before us is clear: To demand truth. To seek accountability. And to ensure that such a failure never happens again.

The question is, do we have the courage to do it?

Dr Brian Benfield, retired professor, Department of Economics, University of the Witwatersrand, is a Senior Associate and Board member of the Free Market Foundation.