If you think that panicky and opportunistic pandemic policies have sucked freedom out of people’s lives over the past few years, you’re right! While the world’s political leaders have long been tightening the screws on their suffering populations, COVID-19 gave too many of them an excuse to accelerate the process. According to the latest edition of the Human Freedom Index, published by America’s Cato Institute and Canada’s Fraser Institute, that makes life worse for almost everybody.

“In the year 2020, 94 percent of the world’s population saw a fall in its freedom compared to the year before,” Cato’s Ian Vásquez, one of the authors of the index, wrote last week. “The annual Human Freedom Index, released today by the Cato Institute and the Fraser Institute, documents how the Covid‐​19 pandemic was a catastrophe for human freedom.”

Grim as that is, it’s a predicted acceleration of a preexisting downward slide for liberty.