The text aims at opening a space for discussion on the problems of governance under the strain of uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic is a testing experience for contemporary liberal democracies and their underlying governance paradigm. The article concentrates on three main issues. First, it explores how the crisis challenged authorities and their ability to sustain an overarching societal agenda, a normative horizon of governance, in view of an uncertain future. Second, it focuses on the driving logic of governance mechanisms and problematizes the preoccupation with the management of effects when dealing with social problems. Last but not least, it points to two particular dangers for democracy that emerge from the failures of the current governance paradigm in the face of the pandemic: legitimizing the imbalance of powers and normalizing social distance as the new crystal lattice of public and social interaction.