A virus is haunting the world — the coronavirus. All the world organisations have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this virus: WHO and UN, USA and EU, Xi Jinping and Joe Biden, BioNTech and AstraZeneca have joined hands and even Bill Gates seems to contribute his bit.
Where are those in opposition to the proposed restrictions who have not been decried as scatterbrains by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of being anti-vaxxers, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries? An important thing results from this fact: Anti-vaxxers have been acknowledged to be itself a power.
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Those who know their classics will immediately see that the sentences above are a paraphrase of the first words of the preface of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels adapted to the present situation. My rewording of this passage is sarcasm, but it is also serious. The world does suffer from a virus and that virus is so dangerous that strong measures are necessary to fight it, and that’s why world organisations etc. join hands. But humans wouldn’t be humans if they wouldn’t disagree about the measures to be taken and about which measures are best. However, where measures are taken there are people who are against them, and where a vaccine is developed there are people who are anti-vax. And when people oppose, they are often lumped together and branded as simply being “against us”.
Let’s look at the measures. As I see it, the present anti-covid measures are of two kinds: Measures to stop the spread of the virus and measures against people that might spread the virus. Let’s call them virus-based measures and human-based measures respectively. When talking of virus-based measures I think of face masks; covid passes (a proof that you have been vaccinated, recently had covid, or have been tested negatively on the coronavirus); keeping distance; home working; etc. When talking of human-based measures I think of a curfew or, what you more and more see happen now, a ban on going out for non-vaccinated people or at least for them a ban on visiting certain events like concerts or sports events, based on the idea that it is more likely that the coronavirus will be spread by non-vaccinated people than by vaccinated people.
On the face of it both virus-based measures and human-based measures seem reasonable. Before I am going to argue that the latter aren’t, let me first say something about political systems. There are roughly two types of political systems: democracies and dictatorships. Of course, in the first place, both types are about how rulers are selected, but democracies take into account the interests of the people as much as possible, including the interests of minorities, while dictatorships govern in the interest of those who are in power, oppressing or at least downgrading those who don’t support them. With this distinction in mind, let’s now consider the anti-covid measures. I think that all such measures are dictatorial in some way, but, paraphrasing Orwell, some measures are more dictatorial than others. That’s what we see here, too. Virus-based measures tell people what they must not do but they leave much elbow room to adapt and to choose your own way. So, if a covid pass is required for visiting a concert, the visitor has at least the choice between being vaccinated, being tested or not to go (choosing to become ill is not a reasonable option, of course). Human-based measures, on the other hand, take this elbow room away from the people and instead they prescribe what they must do. So, if non-vaccinated people are forced to stay home (with some exceptions, like going to a food shop) they have no other choice than doing what is ordered them to do. In other words, virus-based measures give (by far) more freedom than human-based measures, and in this way they take the interests of the people more into account than human-based measures. Or, in again other words, virus-based measures are relatively democratic while human-based measures are (relatively) dictatorial. Need I say yet which kind of measures are to be preferred? Human-based anti-covid measures must be avoided as much as possible if not rejected at all.
Moreover, there is more. Human-based anti-covid measures are not only bad because they harm the democratic rights of individuals, but they are also bad for society. By the way they are presently applied they lead to a dichotomy in society between the “good guys and girls” (the vaccinated) and the “bad guys and girls” (the non-vaccinated), which can lead to serious conflicts (as we see already here and there). But look at the non-vaccinated: people have not taken the vaccine for all kinds of reasons: for religious reasons; for medical reasons; because they don’t trust the vaccine; because they don’t trust the makers of the vaccine or those who tell them to take it; because they are lax and have postponed again and again taking their jabs; etc. You cannot approach the non-vaccinated as if they were one group. And so we are back at the introductory paraphrase of this blog: Those who are against you are often seen as one; wrongly. This is another plea to fight the virus that haunts the world only with virus-based measures. What else?
Those who know their classics will immediately see that the sentences above are a paraphrase of the first words of the preface of the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels adapted to the present situation. My rewording of this passage is sarcasm, but it is also serious. The world does suffer from a virus and that virus is so dangerous that strong measures are necessary to fight it, and that’s why world organisations etc. join hands. But humans wouldn’t be humans if they wouldn’t disagree about the measures to be taken and about which measures are best. However, where measures are taken there are people who are against them, and where a vaccine is developed there are people who are anti-vax. And when people oppose, they are often lumped together and branded as simply being “against us”.
Let’s look at the measures. As I see it, the present anti-covid measures are of two kinds: Measures to stop the spread of the virus and measures against people that might spread the virus. Let’s call them virus-based measures and human-based measures respectively. When talking of virus-based measures I think of face masks; covid passes (a proof that you have been vaccinated, recently had covid, or have been tested negatively on the coronavirus); keeping distance; home working; etc. When talking of human-based measures I think of a curfew or, what you more and more see happen now, a ban on going out for non-vaccinated people or at least for them a ban on visiting certain events like concerts or sports events, based on the idea that it is more likely that the coronavirus will be spread by non-vaccinated people than by vaccinated people.
On the face of it both virus-based measures and human-based measures seem reasonable. Before I am going to argue that the latter aren’t, let me first say something about political systems. There are roughly two types of political systems: democracies and dictatorships. Of course, in the first place, both types are about how rulers are selected, but democracies take into account the interests of the people as much as possible, including the interests of minorities, while dictatorships govern in the interest of those who are in power, oppressing or at least downgrading those who don’t support them. With this distinction in mind, let’s now consider the anti-covid measures. I think that all such measures are dictatorial in some way, but, paraphrasing Orwell, some measures are more dictatorial than others. That’s what we see here, too. Virus-based measures tell people what they must not do but they leave much elbow room to adapt and to choose your own way. So, if a covid pass is required for visiting a concert, the visitor has at least the choice between being vaccinated, being tested or not to go (choosing to become ill is not a reasonable option, of course). Human-based measures, on the other hand, take this elbow room away from the people and instead they prescribe what they must do. So, if non-vaccinated people are forced to stay home (with some exceptions, like going to a food shop) they have no other choice than doing what is ordered them to do. In other words, virus-based measures give (by far) more freedom than human-based measures, and in this way they take the interests of the people more into account than human-based measures. Or, in again other words, virus-based measures are relatively democratic while human-based measures are (relatively) dictatorial. Need I say yet which kind of measures are to be preferred? Human-based anti-covid measures must be avoided as much as possible if not rejected at all.
Moreover, there is more. Human-based anti-covid measures are not only bad because they harm the democratic rights of individuals, but they are also bad for society. By the way they are presently applied they lead to a dichotomy in society between the “good guys and girls” (the vaccinated) and the “bad guys and girls” (the non-vaccinated), which can lead to serious conflicts (as we see already here and there). But look at the non-vaccinated: people have not taken the vaccine for all kinds of reasons: for religious reasons; for medical reasons; because they don’t trust the vaccine; because they don’t trust the makers of the vaccine or those who tell them to take it; because they are lax and have postponed again and again taking their jabs; etc. You cannot approach the non-vaccinated as if they were one group. And so we are back at the introductory paraphrase of this blog: Those who are against you are often seen as one; wrongly. This is another plea to fight the virus that haunts the world only with virus-based measures. What else?
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