Headline Diplomat eJournal-Issue 1, Series 2
The perilous lenses of COVID-19: The sociopolitical impact
Emmanuel Ifeanyi Ekwomadu, Content Writer, Headline Diplomat, LUDCI.eu
Several incredible and troubling legislation, orders, and decisions are being taken by governments to tackle the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. Initially, when the pandemic broke out, governments advised people to stay at home. Later on, they started to grab more power for themselves by enforcing lockdown rules. Countries after countries started imposing draconian lockdown rules.
To a certain degree, the decision would have been legit if it ended in 2 months’ time. After 9 months of confinement, such a decision cannot be rational in any way. Decisions such as forcefully taking over the economy, placing many workers on government payrolls, cracking down public gatherings, aggressively withholding citizens without masks, and forbidding people to go out of their houses are absurd, to say the least.
For the past 9 months, authorities are amassing to themselves outrageous powers, arbitrarily arresting people, even those considered ‘potentially infectious’. While quarantining COVID-19 infected people could be justified to some extent, any tendency to abuse such emergency power to attack perceived enemies is only too obvious.
The entire world was placed under house arrest, stopped short from being a police world only because of a shortage of police! Have you considered how truly fragile our freedom and liberty are? Are we willing to face reality? Many people are not. For the logical mind, lacking democratic principles is a real and serious threat that has arisen with the coronavirus crisis.
Whether or not you have considered it, it is now about time to realise how cheap and easy it is to take our freedom and liberty away. Many leaders in different government levels across the world have been looking for means to get rid of the legal and constitutional restraint on power. When the coronavirus pandemic allowed them to throw off that restraint, they happily grabbed it.
People’s freedom is becoming what the government gives and takes away. “From this evening, I must give the British people a very simple instruction: You MUST stay at home,” U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared on March 23, 2020. It is known that there is nothing in U.K. common law and constitution advocating that its residents would need government permission to leave their own house. In the United States, a federal judge only recently ruled that North Carolina’s coronavirus restrictions imposed by the governor, violate freedom of religious expression. Yet, similar restrictions are being placed in many other U.S states – of course under the pretext of the pandemic.
For instance, in California, everyone must wear a face mask in public, under a new law that was issued by Governor Gavin Newsom. In Europe, we observe politicians acting out as strongmen, practically putting their armies on the streets. In Hungary, the government pushed for an emergency law that gives dictatorial power for an unlimited amount of time. In Malaysia, over 4,000 people were forcibly arrested for violating the lockdown order. In June 2020, a high court in South Africa ruled that the lockdown order is ‘irrational and unconstitutional’. In Russia, in the name of enforcing lockdown orders, the government is using face recognition and allowing the collection of personal data.
And it does not stop there. It gets more troubling. Governments across the world are now seeking to legitimise their nefarious actions. The UK government, through the Coronavirus Act 2020, is pushing for a new law that allows the government vast new powers. Similar acts are being proposed and enacted in many other countries across the world. This is a deeply disheartening situation for a world that has always fought to preserve its fundamental human rights against any power abuses.
The way governments have gone about enforcing the use of face masks – the use of which has been debated as to how it helps slow the spread of the virus – at home, in stores, schools, restaurants, bars, and other public places. The mask debate has already spread to schools, with the Centre for Disease Control already issuing guidelines for K-12 school administrators on the use of face coverings.
Even children are not spared! They are now required to compulsorily wear facemasks in schools. To a certain degree, masks may be necessary to wear, but should be procured by local governments and not the families.
Also, facing pressure from governments to enforce the use of face masks, business owners are now going to extremes in making people forcefully put on face coverings, many of which have ended in violence.
In July, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, desperate to comply with government rules and to keep their businesses afloat, wrote a letter to the U.S National Governors Association seeking their help in sending a strong and uniform message about social distancing and wearing a mask.
Before this, many businesses, particularly bars and restaurants, were shut down by government lockdown orders. And after these businesses were allowed to gradually reopen, there was another order mandating them to shut down by midnight. Mostly failing to give much thought to the economic implications of the shutting down of these businesses, politicians issue orders, most of which are illegal and unconstitutional.
Social distancing and lockdown rules have also made many people sick, perhaps not of the virus, but many have emotionally and psychologically taken ill. There are concerns that wearing facemasks and social isolation may weaken immunity.
While this claim may not be totally true, research has found that loneliness and social isolation can have adverse effects on mental health, immunity, and cardiovascular health. In some cases, carbon-dioxide can get trapped in the chamber of the masks and reenter the body each time the user inhales. This delivers less oxygen to the body, leading to difficulty in breathing, suffocation, and sometimes heart attacks. There have also been reported cases of masks harboring microbes, which later infects the mask user.
Already, many countries now require air passengers to be tested on arrival. According to China’s aviation authority, all passengers on China-bound flights must provide COVID-19 test results before boarding. The local authority in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China, which has China’s largest African communities, began a campaign to forcibly test and quarantine Africans. Furthermore, many governments are now taking it to the next level by mandating testing and quarantining on arrival, whether you already have a Covid-19 test result. Even the International Air Transport Association took exceptions to some orders given by authorities across the world concerning air travel. The world has truly changed!
Yet, while these irrational actions are taking place across the world, many people feel unconcerned. Already, some are calling for governments to grab similar powers in other areas, for instance, to fight climate change.
Largely, it appears the spirit of complacency has taken over the world, as people do not realise how vulnerable we are to tyranny. People are handing governments and authorities new powers, unheard of in any democratic institution during peacetime.
In recent times, people have protested about the smallest of thing you could imagine, but would not react as their liberty and freedom are being taken away. Freedom is worth life itself, but we are giving it away for something no worse than the flu! If we are honest with ourselves, it would be very difficult to reverse the handing over of such extraordinary powers.
Conclusion:
Taking a holistic look at the whole picture, it is apparent that governments are using the coronavirus crisis to make their citizens vulnerable and take authoritarian control over our rights. There seems to be no other way to look at it.
Wearing masks to prevent a potential spread may be necessary. But it is equally important to clean your hands, washing your cloths, keeping your distance, and avoid surrounding yourself by crowded people. Especially when it comes to children, the rules would definitely need to be different and better thought out. Enforcing the same rules to the entire population is definitely a wrong policy decision.
As bars and restaurants, and other small businesses, are beginning to resume operations after being illegally shut down, they should be allowed to operate without restrictions as to when they close, given that they provide the necessary hygiene measures to keep people safe, while keeping them safely apart and at a distance.
If such rules are not kept, then these business owners should be fined, but not necessarily shut their business down. Air travelers should be tested upon arrival, but only if they have given their written consent. Random testing is not consensual or constitutional. Quarantine is necessary for at least 2 days upon arrival and for at least 14 days before bringing oneself to bigger crowds.
However, the rationalisation that acknowledges that our freedom is being taken away because governments are doing it to save lives must be dropped very fast. The War is not against a virus but against how this virus is used to take our freedom away and replacing it with communism.
