Robert Dingwall is a professor of sociology at Nottingham Trent University and a member of several Government advisory groups
These are extraordinary times, and not just because we are coming through the greatest national trauma since the Second World War.
The vaccination programme is something close to a modern miracle. There is further good news in the startling success of the treatments we are pioneering for coronavirus patients. The UK is leading the world in these areas.
Yet, as the past week has shown, the nation is facing another threat – one which is both unprecedented and deeply troubling.
We are witnessing the birth of what you might call the ‘biosecurity state’, a new world in which politicians and the scientists who advise them decide that suppressing disease is more important than the human freedoms we take for granted.
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