Before the COVID-19 pandemic, many people in the West took for granted the freedom and mobility that we enjoy in our societies. We assumed that the government would never impose drastic measures such as curfews or lockdowns, because these measures are often associated with authoritarian regimes. However, the pandemic has forced us to reevaluate these assumptions, because as soon as some governments in the West saw how well it "worked" in China they decided to implement the same thing.