China’s ongoing brutal lockdowns are a reminder of the insanity of ‘Zero Covid’.
Remember Zero Covid? This was the idea that the only way to deal with Covid-19 was by eliminating it. Only when every trace of the virus had been scrubbed from society would it be safe to let the masses out again, insisted the Zero Covid fanatics. Zero Covid ideologues were everywhere. In the medical establishment, the political elite, the media. In early 2021 the Guardian’s leader writers were telling Boris Johnson that he should ‘[stamp] out the virus with a Zero Covid strategy’. Kill Covid to save society.
