RANT: WILL THE END OF COVID BE THE START OF SOMETHING WORSE?

I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT A NEW DISEASE OR ANYTHING. As difficult as this long Covid year has been for so many, with the loss of loved ones, of livelihoods, the loss of connections and so on, the fact is: we’ve been here before. Human beings have always suffered the ravages of pandemics and plagues; we live within disease vectors after all.  It’s when we cross boundaries and grow our populations into regions where we’ve never lived before and come across new pathogens, or when our transportation networks give local diseases access to new markets, so to speak, it’s at these times that we can expect those pesky viruses and bacteria to take advantage of the situation, often to our disadvantage.

But when Covid is finally over, what will have changed? The city I live in has just announced a “stay at home” order (only going out for food, medicine, outdoor exercise) and our province (Ontario) has gone into another “lockdown” to cope with a 3^rd wave of Covid plus variants. Vaccine rollout is abysmal. (Canada ranks far down the list in the percentage of even first jab completions, let alone those who are fully vaccinated.*) The province’s healthcare system is stressed to the point that Queen’s Park has asked the federal government for assistance to boost the number of front-line medical personnel. There is indeed ‘Covid fatigue’ hitting the province and the nation, as there is in many parts of the world just now, with growing criticisms of government inaction, the actions of lagging support systems, anemic vaccine rollouts and so on. There will be much to analyze and rectify when we’re on the other side of this.

 

    Premier Doug Ford

And that’s what I’m wondering about. Having gone through a devastating blow to world economies and all the struggles that still remain, how will national governments and local authorities respond as they support and direct their restless and frustrated populations? What changes to laws and statutes will they implement? In turn, what will people find acceptable or tolerable? My point is, how far will governments go to restore confidence in their administrations and, more importantly (to them at least), what will they do in order to remain in power?

“Overreach” is what I’m thinking about. And the word is defined in legal terms as "conduct that exceeds legal limits as of authority or due process." (Merriam-Webster.) In Ontario last week, there was a big flap over Premier Ford's government issuing emergency powers that would give police the authority to stop and question any citizen about what they were doing outside, possibly requesting that person return home unless they were engaged in the authorized activities I listed above. In addition, banning outdoor gatherings other than with immediate family members; border “checkpoints” between neighbouring provinces, and outdoor playgrounds to be closed province wide were in the bill.

Well, the Premier did a quick climb-down the next day in the wake of a public backlash and public-health officials' criticisms, as well as several police departments across the province saying they would not enforce the new laws. The Premier had to eat crow, with a public apology for “getting it wrong” and “going to far” with such measures, and he promptly withdrew the proposed legislation. Had there been more attention paid to health authorities' requests for an earlier lockdown, a targeted “hot-spot” immunization policy and restrictions placed on international flights from Covid-active countries (albeit a federal responsibility), there might have been no need for the Premier to consider such restrictions in the first place, and to my point, necessitate his acting with an overreach of governmental authority, potentially violating citizens’ autonomy and privacy rights.

 

I’m reading a SciFi novel, The Great North Road by Peter Hamilton, set in a techno-future about a hundred years or so in the future. It’s a door stopper, but with a fairly entertaining “who-done-it” murder mystery/detective story as the main plot line. It’s relevant for my Rant today because the ‘tech’ that is on display is a surveillance-state's wet dream: nanotechnology that provides enhanced tracking data on everyone’s movements and activities using “smartdust”—essentially microscopic cameras and sensors—that can be sprayed on buildings, roads, anything really, to record vehicle and pedestrian movements in a city, specifically Newcastle, England. The internet (called the “transnet” in Hamilton’s future dystopia) is robust and ubiquitous, and a rich source for data-harvesting of just about everyone's personal information by government, police and powerful corporations. Fun times.

 

We’re not there yet, but will we allow ourselves to be ruled by governments that institute regulations demanding greater and greater access to our personal information and activities? Will we allow our freedoms and individual liberties to be limited and circumscribed by piecemeal acceptance of this or that new law and regulation** until “smartdust” is everywhere, so to speak, and personal autonomy, nowhere? Governments, by their nature, are reluctant to give up power once they acquire it. For example, the “Authorization to Use Military Force Act” (AUMF) in the United States is an example of legislation passed to address an emergency in 2001 (the 9/11 attacks) that's been on the books ever since, and been used  by Presidents to take military actions abroad on a number of occasions, without congressional approval. Canada has a similar “Emergency Powers Act” whose use the Trudeau government contemplated in late 2020 to deal with the Covid pandemic. I'm not saying that would necessarily have been a bad thing, just that power is an intoxicant to be imbibed carefully, whether you're an individual or an institution.

 

And whether by increments, a lack of foresight or vigilance, or by a general apathy in the population, thus are  cemented in place increased surveillance laws, restrictions to personal autonomy, and control over more and more facets of citizenry lives and livelihoods (such as changes to financial, banking or pension fund regulations, social assistance programs, etc.) until the "new reality" become business as usual and is taken for granted. It’s a slippery slope from here to there and something we need to keep in mind when our societies face crises, and the directions they take emerging from them. So yes, I think there are worse things than pandemics. Microbes aren't aware of how they treat us, so they get a pass. How we treat each other, on the other hand, is something that must pass muster. Anyway, food for thought and something to chew on in a future Rant, I’m sure.

 

Cheers, Jake.

 

* Thus far there has been close to one billion vaccine doses given worldwide. The New York Times has an easy-to-read vaccine “tracker” chart which shows Israel leading the pack, followed by the Seychelles and Bahrain with 56%, 53% and 32% of their population fully vaccinated, so I guess it’s time to move someplace sunnier. The United States is down the list a bit, but at a respectable 27% of their population having received the full course of vaccine treatments. Canada is at low 2.6%. I’ve harped on this in an earlier Rant, and this begs the question on the wisdom of getting rid of our domestic vaccine research and production facilities in the 1980s. (Might be time for a rethink, maybe?) 

** In case anyone thinks this is a 'SciFi scenario', recently in England there have been protests against the Johnson Conservative's proposed legislation which would curtail and, in some cases, criminalize street protests, among other measures in its huge, 307-page "crime and sentencing" bill before parliament. Similar anti-protest legislation has been proposed recently in Florida, I believe. 

In the name of "homeland security" or "anti-terrorism", or whatever, governments may adopt policies that, in other years, would be entirely unacceptable by the population. Troubled waters are ahead. 

 

 

    Bernard waited patiently for the bell to ring.