THEY'LL TURN US INTO PAUPERS BECAUSE WE'LL BE EASIER TO PLEASE.

That might be the effect of the continued Wuhan coronavirus mitigations.  Sandy Szwarc has a two part essay entitled "How a Virus Was Used To Transform a Free Country" that argues a number of things, although the effect might be the pauperization and infantilization of many formerly autonomous people.  Here's the opening of the first part.

The economic consequences of these directives – masks; social distancing; testing; travel, school and business restrictions − have led to historic levels of job losses and businesses stopping new hiring. People looking for work have been crippled from finding jobs. Tens of millions of Americans are at risk of losing their group health insurance. As Americans grow increasingly more desperate, they are more willing to be convinced to accept government bailouts.

But public officials created the desperation in the first place.

Americans are coming to understand that the crisis resulting from the government lockdowns and restrictions was used to convince politicians to support the CARES Act. This Act, however, was never about health or helping working Americans. It can best be described as bailouts in return for socialism.

It’s undeniably evident that the CARES Act was focused on the progressive tenet of redistribution of wealth and growing the numbers of Americans dependent upon the government. It also epitomizes imprudent government spending and spending not free from corruption by special interests. Money is taken from working taxpayers, given to those who aren’t, expanding social programs and the size and power of government entities, while lining the pockets of special interests. That’s socialism.

I'm not persuaded that it's socialism. Neither are actually existing socialists.

I don't see any collective ownership of the means of production; rather, as the essayist suggests, the rent-seekers are making out in ways that old-fashioned grifters can only envy.  I don't see any democratic decision making; rather, as the essayist suggests, I'm seeing top-down control where previously there wasn't any.  The apotheosis, in other words, of Technocratic Expertise.  "Legislators have delegated much of their job to unelected bureaucrats, resulting in regulations that are often in an agency’s own best interest."  It's on the Congress to rein in the Centers for Disease Control, even if that means owning some of the mistakes.  It's on the state legislatures to rein in their governors, even if that means sharing some of the responsibility for the policy errors, and there will be policy errors.  "Deep within government there lies a shadow government of unelected officials—often known as the “administrative state,” who are a part of the executive branch, but who violate the separation of powers by exercising both executive and legislative, and sometimes judicial, power."  What they're getting away with now, they'll treat as the start line for what they will attempt to get away with in the next "crisis."  (And people in the political class justify their existence by hyping up crises.)

The second part argues how the pauperization will continue.

The public is finally coming to realize that there is no end in sight in the government’s plans to never allow the country to return to normal in the foreseeable future. The fact that herd immunity, from natural immunities preexisting from past coronavirus infections and people who’ve already had the virus, is making the pandemic mandates and the “vaccine” increasingly less critical, is being ignored.

Now, even the “vaccine” won’t allow life or business to return to normal. Anthony Fauci has threatened that government mitigation measures will last two years, continuing into 2022; some academics have advocated for mandates to continue years until the virus is completely eradicated (which will be never, as most coronaviruses become endemic nd part of the mix of seasonal viruses we have every year, and resemble the common cold); and despite the fact that the World Health Organization advises against mask wearing among the general public, stakeholders are saying that normal life (without masking, social distancing and other restrictions) won’t be permitted until after 2022, even after “lockdowns” are lifted.

All of this means that the projected economic and job recovery may not even begin until after 2022, at the earliest.

It's going to be on Australians and New Zealanders to turn on their leaders, who are imposing mandates each time a koala coughs.

In the States, it's going to be on libertarians and post-Trump Republicans to make the administrative state and the Democrats (and their enablers in news, entertainment, and the academy, but I repeat myself) own the shutdowns, own the overdoses, own the depression, own the suicides.