At least while they were frightened, people complied. At times when people fear death, they go along with measures that they believe, rightly or wrongly, will save them—even if that means a loss of freedom. Such measures have been popular in the past. Liberals, libertarians, democrats, and freedom-lovers of all kinds should not fool themselves: They will be popular now too.

In some European countries, we are already watching that process unfold with a good deal of social consensus. Italy has gone into total lockdown. All shops and businesses are closed except those deemed essential; roadblocks are in place to prevent unnecessary travel; public parks and playgrounds are shut. Italian police already have fined tens of thousands of people for being outside without a valid reason. Since last Tuesday, Paris has been on a similarly stringent lockdown. You cannot leave home without filling out a form; 100,000 police officers have been assigned to make sure people don’t break the rules. On one day alone—Wednesday of last week—French police issued 4,000 fines for being outside for nonessential reasons.

Harsh, yes—but people now accept these measures as necessary. The Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, enjoys the support of seven out of 10 Italians at the moment, an extraordinary number in a country that historically distrusts its politicians. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has openly described the fight against the virus as a “war,” and this tougher approach and language have won him a majority of national approval too.

Taking advantage of this impulse, some are already going much farther. On Friday, the Hungarian government sent a bill to Parliament that will give dictatorial powers to the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, in the name of the “emergency.” For an indefinite period of time, he will be able to ignore whichever laws he wishes, without consulting legislators; elections and referenda are to be suspended. Breaking of quarantine will become a crime, punishable by a prison sentence. The spread of false information or other information that causes “disturbance” or “unrest” will also be a crime, also punishable by a prison sentence. It is unclear who will define false: The language is vague enough that it could include almost any criticism of the government’s public-health policy. None of this will fix the fact that Hungary is one of the European countries least prepared to fight the pandemic—not least because the policies of its nationalist government persuaded so many educated people, doctors included, to leave the country.

In normal times, the Hungarian opposition would never support such a blatant transfer of power, especially one that seems designed to hide the government’s failures. But at this time, some who would normally oppose the government will go along. “All of their warning systems have been switched off,” Péter Krekó, a Hungarian analyst, told me. At this moment of rising fear, he said, nobody wants to be seen as unpatriotic, as somehow harming the health and safety of Hungarians. Everybody wants to believe in the essential goodness of the nation and the state.