Matthew Crawford on "The Danger of Safetyism."
"At the level of sentiment, there appears to be a feedback loop wherein the safer we become, the more intolerable any remaining risk appears."
“I suspect the ease with which we have lately accepted the authority of health experts to reshape the contours of our common life is due to the fact that safetyism has largely displaced other moral sensibilities that might offer some resistance. At the level of sentiment, there appears to be a feedback loop wherein the safer we become, the more intolerable any remaining risk appears. At the level of bureaucratic grasping, we can note that emergency powers are seldom relinquished once the emergency has passed. Together, these dynamics make up a kind of ratchet mechanism that moves in only one direction, tightening against the human spirit."
This article was written 4 months ago, but its points are worth considering even more today.