THERE was recently a large demonstration in Tolouse, France by restaurant and bar owners over the COVID lockdowns. Before that, there was a protest in Germany where government troops sprayed the crowd with cold water.
There were many such other demonstrations over the COVID lockdowns recently, and that’s because the COVID pandemic is no longer seen as large a threat as before.
One could make that argument in the early parts of the year, but as we close 2020 that is no longer the case. People are not dying out in the streets, nor are there crowds of corpses filling the morgues.
This isn’t to underestimate the COVID virus. In fact, I was one of those who wrote about the virus back in Feb. 2 when it was still fresh news:
“The best way to deal with plagues is to treat them like natural disasters, and the Philippines has plenty of experiences with those. The best case scenario for corona is that it will peter out. The worst case is that it turns into a miniature version of the Spanish Flu.”
At this point, the situation is becoming like the former, which is why certain groups of people are behaving the way they do now.
Even second wave cases seem to be weak relative to the first one. If that isn’t enough to convince you, remember that quite a few world leaders caught COVID, including Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump, and as far as I know none of them have died.
At this point, people are looking at the COVID lockdowns from a cost-benefit analysis. Just how much of it is really necessary, and can society really afford it?
People in other countries have already reached such questions. We, in the Philippines, have yet to catch up, but depending on how the government continues to approach the pandemic, we’ll eventually get there.
I already see signs of life going back to its original default setting, so to speak, and at that point, no one wants to go back to lockdown unless there’s very good reasons to do so.
Don’t get me wrong. The COVID pandemic is still dangerous, but given what we know, it’s not as dangerous as we originally thought./PN
