Coronavirus has panicked Western leaders — not all, but most — into behaving irrationally and dishonestly. Australia, so lightly touched by the pandemic, has been especially poorly served by a panicked political class, an incompetent bureaucracy and a useless media.

The panic launched by the pandemic has generated a visible deterioration of not just the quality of thought among politicians and bureaucrats, but a tangible shift to dishonesty about — and manipulation of — the pandemic. Statistics have perverted the facts and the politics of managing the virus, ridiculous modelling has enabled senior bureaucrats to pervert proper processes: hotel quarantine in Victoria, the Ruby Princess debacle in New South Wales, excessive border closures and lockdowns...