There is a justifiable concern about the persistence of creeping authoritarianism legitimized by public-health considerations. These grievances has led well-meaning individuals to lean towards lax attitudes against the pandemic, such as the Laissez-faire approach maintained by Sweden. This negligent class of strategies is referred to as the Laissez-faire strategy.
I have previously criticized this stance because it obfuscates – it is rather a narrative about how different modes of control, which have been employed all along but kept secret in the cabinet of horrors, are let loose in times of crisis to attain positive publicity, and perhaps even popularity. Moreover, assuming that the virus is real, it was possible from the outset to infer that a soft approach against the virus would lead to disastrous consequences for the population with certainty.
The other bug in the rationale for Laissez-faire approaches, based on suspicions of creeping authoritarianism, is of a more fundamental character. If you believe that the state will take advantage of the situation and increase its control with the pandemic as an excuse – do you really want to advocate the Laissez-faire strategy? Negligence drastically increases the WHO-concern about a virus which stays with us for the unforeseeable future. It could in principle cycle indefinitely. It follows that the postulated authoritarian state could terrorise its subjects for the unforeseeable future with the virus pretext.
Nightmare- or paranoid-proof strategies are theoretically interesting. In this case the strategy must also be optimal in the imaginary world where Corona is just a charade to terrorise/control/get rid of (inconvenient) citizens. However, then it is obviously better with coordinated lock-down efforts under a limited period of time, which makes the virus disappear, which implies that the state cannot continue to use that particular virus as a pretext. This strategy coincides with what New Zealand has successfully achieved in the so-called real/non-imaginary world.
Clearly, those in power can come up with threats of pandemics periodically, but there is enough statistical evidence to rule out claims which are too frequent. Moreover, such claims are perfectly compatible with the Laissez-faire strategy, which would then be even worse. Moreover, it is difficult for singular states to make credible scams of this kind – transnational cooperation would be required. If such a simulation is detected, then it would mean credible evidence of the existence of a concealed, super-powerful, authoritarian, international institution. Such revelation could unite citizens from all over the world against it. In other words, although not unthinkable, it would be a very costly scam in such state of the world.