[dehrmann]

> governments have handed virtually all authority over lifting lockdown to their health ministers

This does worry me, but in Europe and the US, the consensus seems to be that it's not possible to stop it, so settle on some sort of a "live with it" strategy. During the fall, I remember Europeans looking at the US and saying "they just needed a real lockdown." As winter came and case counts rose again in Europe, there wasn't much of an appetite for another round of hard lockdowns.

My best guess for developed countries is that things start getting back to normal by late summer one way or another because either vaccines are effective enough and bring down the case counts or they weren't, but people are willing to accept the risk and move on. Support for strict government policies only works if there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

[Mediterraneo10]

You are right there wasn't much appetite for the hardest degree of lockdowns, but what Europe got instead is bad enough. Borders closed in spite of Schengen, putting a stop to things like cross-border relationships and the sort of everyday interaction between European peoples that staves off nationalisms. Then you have closure of restaurants, concert halls, etc. which has led to a wave of bankrupcies, and governments show little interest in compensating these sectors adequately for their lost business.

When politicians saw that they could get away with hard borders again and closed businesses without too much popular protest (and that is, to a large degree, due to popular protests being banned), I worry that these restrictions could last much longer than just this summer. After all, as I mentioned in my post above, when the scientific advisers to your country’s government are interviewed in the news and recommend restrictions in perpetuity, where is the light at the end of the tunnel?

[dehrmann]

"Listen to the epidemiologists" has been some of the worst messaging through all of this because they've never actually stopped a pandemic before (other than smallpox), and they don't necessarily understand the politics, economics, psychology, or legality of their ideas.