Welcome to the newsletter highlighting The Economist’s best writing on the pandemic. Our cover story this week brings you new reporting about the treatment of the 12m members of China’s Uyghur minority at home and abroad. Their persecution by the state amounts to the most extensive violation in the world today of the principle that individuals have a right to liberty and dignity simply because they are people.

In our writing on covid-19, we start where our cover leaves off: with an account of how despots and autocrats around the world are using the pandemic as an excuse to curtail liberty and democracy. We argue against the proposal by Britain’s opposition Labour Party to slow the spread of infections by locking down the country with a two- or three-week circuit-breaker. As backing for that, we analyse the tussle between Britain’s central government and its regions and city mayors over how to deal with the virus—and we also report on similar tensions in New York. Bartleby, our management columnist, celebrates how covid-19 is liberating workers from the tyranny of the clock.

Our mortality tracker uses the gap between the total number of people who have died from any cause and the historical average for the time of year to estimate how many deaths from the virus the official statistics are failing to pick up.

We have been covering the pandemic in Economist Radio and Economist Films, too. On Monday The Intelligence, our daily current-affairs podcast, had a segment reported from Sweden, often cited by libertarians as proof of the folly of harsh, government-imposed restrictions.

Recorded cases of covid-19 are growing fast in much of Europe and America. That is worrying, but death rates are still very much lower than they were in the spring. Long may that last.