I think the implication is that there is always a block for government over-reach and waiting for a convenient excuse to execute it.

Just as the implication isn't that the PATRIOT act authors did 9/11, they certainly took the momentum of the aftermath of a tragedy to push their pre-existing agenda.

You don't need conspiracies. Just naive people who think that in times of crisis you need to centralise power and who don't think through the consequences.

What does that mean in the UK context specifically ... for example, the COVID law repeals a reform that was made some years ago, after police finally caught the most prolific serial killer in history. He is believed to have killed perhaps 250 people without being caught, because he was a doctor who was forging death certificates. So the rules were changed to require multiple sign-offs on the cause of death, because multiple signoffs on cremation forms were the only way he was originally detected.

In the COVID panic that rule has been removed. Doctors can now put any cause of death they want without anyone checking them. In many countries there are now widespread reports of elderly relatives being assigned COVID as a cause of death in care homes, when the family members know they repeatedly tested negative and weren't sick.

Even better, the rule that said multiple psychiatry opinions are required to involuntarily commit someone was also repealed. In other words the government anticipated their policies would lead to both mass mental breakdown and civil disobedience; allowing a single doctor to effectively imprison someone indefinitely without any trial or any checks/balances at all, looks like a rather neat solution to that, doesn't it?

All these changes are in a sense well intentioned, the lawmakers believed speed is more important than accuracy. Those beliefs are wrong.

I'm leery of what you may be trying to imply. That I think coronavirus was a conspiracy? No. Please don't head towards slander territory just because someone questions a piece of legislation.

I said "reminiscent", i.e it invokes memories. Hastily enacted, a blunt instrument, huge, sweeping changes to legislation, makes human rights organisations nervous etc.