Worrying and at times nasty themes are seeping out of the national insecurity produced by the coronavirus pandemic.

It’s not just the strange grocery hoarding, the ignorance of street-level racist rants, or the emergence of coughing as an assault weapon.

The response to the infections in Australia might be working – just over 6,000 cases, about half of whom have recovered, fewer than 90 new cases a day, although tragically 54 deaths.

But there is a growing view that the cure has been worse than the disease.

And this has led to notions with a disturbing resemblance to recommendations for human sacrifices to appease the Covid-19 demon. They are coming from some of the better-informed members of the national community.

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The former foreign minister and high commissioner to Britain, Alexander Downer, on Tuesday pondered this prospect on Twitter:

“We either save avoidable deaths & destroy society OR accept avoidable deaths & save society. The moral dilemma of our time.”

Downer might have been referring to the troubled situation in Britain but he wasn’t specific.

Certainly the Australian Financial Review journalist John Kehoe was specific on Thursday when he suggested his 68-year-old father would be prepared to die from coronavirus if that meant the country could reopen.

He reported his father’s daily pursuits of tennis and swimming were now off limits and his physical fitness and mental health were suffering.

“Many seniors like him would not put their own life above the livelihoods of their children and grandchildren, if the economic and social costs are too great,” Kehoe wrote.

Kehoe senior’s view is not known.

This long weekend of Easter and Passover is of supreme importance to Christians and Jews but comes with increased questioning of a distinctly secular belief.

That belief is that modern humankind can defeat any diseases, from smallpox to polio to Ebola and beyond. Science will prevail.

Covid-19 is challenging that comforting faith. The disease is rampant globally and even in Australia where a pandemic was declared on 27 February and tough measures soon followed.

A developing perception is that science isn’t working. If it was, the crisis would be over by now and we would be on that “road out” the government talks of. There would be no need to switch off big slabs of the neighbourhood and national economy.

Scepticism about science can encourage dangerous, non-scientific theories, and weaken the authority of politicians employing it. The climate change debate has confirmed that.

The cynicism cross-infection could affect the authority of the prime minister, Scott Morrison, and his hardline accomplices among the premiers who already are facing pressure from voters impatient for a winding back of the Covid-19 precautions.

Opinion surveys so far have depicted Morrison as the coronavirus conqueror with an Essential Research poll released on Tuesday recording a 58% approval level for the government response to the disease, while 63% of voters trusted the government to honestly inform them on the issue.

Only rarely have governments been taken at their word so stoutly.

The very same responses voters have applauded are starting to grate and there is anger that regular lifestyles have not returned. That resentment obviously is stronger among those who have lost wages and businesses, but is also felt by folk wearying of the home isolation drudgery.

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The anger is only slightly moderated by evidence the measures are not only warranted but have been effective in ways New York and London, for example, would envy.

And that’s without human sacrifices.

The success is partly countered by the honesty of politicians and medical officials in warning the tightening could last at least six months and that science won’t have a vaccine for possibly 12 to 18 months.

Aggravation is heightened by such episodes as the bungling of the Ruby Princess disembarkations and the spectacle of a New South Wales minister being fined for doing the personal travel his government had sternly condemned.

There is a chafing for relaxation of restrictions coming from rank and file Australians with a potential for rebellion.

They have been given their instructions on standing well away from strangers, they have meekly lined up to get into supermarkets where there still are empty shelves, and have abandoned the beach and almost all facets of pre-pandemic social life. By-and-large they have been obedient.

Still the heavy-handed injunctions keep coming.

“The period of education is over,” the Tasmanian premier, Peter Gutwein, said grimly on Thursday, warning it now was time for penalties of up to six months jail for those caught going away on Easter holidays.

The coming weeks will require political leaders to leaven the alarms, home detention orders and police interventions with indications of a positive timetable.

That doesn’t mean allowing the coronavirus to run free or a need to “accept avoidable deaths” as outlined in the Downer option.

But it could mean arrangements for Kehoe senior to safely do a few laps and have an occasional hit-up on the court.

There should be serious consideration of what the health minister, Greg Hunt, on Thursday called “early steps” to relieve the gloom and ease the financial crunch, without letting Covid-19 have its deadly way.

Because there are more tough times to come when victory is declared and the priority moves from disease control to rebuilding the economy.

The nation’s patience will be further tested.