Pandemics such as smallpox, tuberculosis, and the Black Death have affected the human population significantly throughout history. As of 2020, Covid-19 is spreading through populations all over the world, and the politics and economics of getting the virus under control with little casualties have been widely discussed.

Regarding Covid-19, to libertarians, Sweden was, for some time, the poster child for how you didn't need a lockdown, although secondary factors such as having a high proportion of single-person households and a cultural tendency to social distance weren't taken into account. Recently, fatalities in Sweden have been on the rise, and its per capita rate is one of the highest recorded (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/).

In the UK, the initial response was to rely on herd immunity, and the lockdown was declared only weeks after other countries had already imposed it. The National Health Service (NHS) were using makeshift...