Lockdowns and the problem of trust

I am quoted in an interesting piece for the Guardian on 17 March 2025 discussing ‘How Covid changed the way Britain thinks‘:

… Jennie Bristow, a reader in sociology at Canterbury Christ Church University who has written widely about the impact of the pandemic on young people, agrees that it “brought to a head many of the trends that were already happening. Covid didn’t create adolescent mental ill health, for instance. It didn’t suddenly bring about major mistrust in institutions.”

But unlike Duffy, her view is that the pandemic had an unprecedented impact on our thinking, not least because of the hugely restrictive responses it provoked. Bristow argues that while lockdowns were imposed with the aim of saving lives, one net effect was to formalise and embed social isolation – with all its negative consequences.

This has led to distrust of other people, particularly young people, as “germs on legs”, she says. The intense focus on obeying the rules also bred a more general mutual suspicion, she argues. “Everyone had their own version of the rules they were following, and they were [criticising] people who they thought were breaking them if they were doing something different. So there was that distrust of each other in society.”…