Unlike previous pandemics, however, Covid didn’t see the same offsets in unifying sentiment. There were many explanations for this, including underreporting of Covid deaths in many countries, but the optics were not good. Democratic governments imposed controls that intruded into ordinarily personal space, while authoritarian governments exploited the pandemic to tighten their control. The decline in Covid numbers, if it holds, will not reverse these developments after the November elections. Just as we may talk about societal comorbidity, societies may suffer from long Covid — an impaired functioning of democracy that may persist long after the contagion survives.

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