There are new situations that will continuously challenge the notion most people have of freedom and will do so in different ways. It is no longer about what constitutes freedom but about how the idea of freedom is perceived and enacted through those situations as well as any consequences of those perceptions.
The world is undergoing yet another major shift. Since late 2019, the planet has been under siege by the COVID-19 virus. As of January 9, 2021, Johns Hopkins University and Medicine reports over 89 million confirmed cases and 1.9 million deaths worldwide. In the U.S., the nation with the highest number of Covid cases and deaths, the university reports over 22 million confirmed cases and over 370,000 deaths attributed to the disease. Those numbers are expected to rise in the coming months.
Recommendations by World Health Organization (WHO), an international agency in charge of public health oversight and NOT regulation (it’s important to make that distinction), include washing hands, properly wearing a face-mask (over the nose and covering the mouth), and maintaining a distance of 6ft from individuals among others. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S. has similar guidelines for care during the pandemic.
These recommendations are ultimately made to keep the public safe based on what is known about how the virus SARS-COV-2, the coronavirus which causes COVID-19, works. State, provincial, and local governments have individual rules with regard to safety when dealing with COVID-19 which can include WHO and CDC recommendations. Additional measures were enacted by states to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. However, these measures had unfortunate effects on people and economies.
The majority of the world was in lockdown in the middle of March 2020 in an effort to quell the spread of the coronavirus. As a result, a frenzy to hoard such things as toilet paper led a fearful public to become anxious and unstable. The lockdown had the added side-effect of shutting down businesses and affecting economies on most levels, from the local to the national. Services like video streaming, food delivery, and online shopping came out on top while brick-and-mortar shops suffered.
The lockdown affected businesses, sometimes in the worst way. Places like restaurants had to innovate in order maintain afloat but that innovation did not guarantee survival. Some family-owned businesses shut down while others managed to survive. Meanwhile, some people simply could not go to work because of the lockdown and as a result, they could not earn to afford their living. People were evicted despite a national moratorium on evictions.
Education was also affected by the lockdown as students from all levels of institutionalized learning were forced to go online for their instruction. It caused no shortage of problems for governments, schools, parents and students alike as the debate whether to keep schools closed or to reopen them continues.
Unfortunately, as purposeful and well-intentioned as they were, the recommendations, guidelines, and measures set forth by governments and health agencies were seen as an imposition by certain individuals who felt like their personal liberties were being infringed upon by them. It is not just in the U.S., a nation which sees itself as the pinnacle of freedom on this planet, but in other nations as well.
In Germany, anti-mask and anti-lockdown protests took place in various cities. According to German news agency Deutsche Welle (DW), these protests were fueled by right-wing extremists and those considered to be “conspiracy theorists.” Police broke up an anti-lockdown gathering in the city of Bremen where individuals protested measures by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to impose a lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Other cities like Frankfurt and Berlin also experienced anti-mask and anti-lockdown protests with police intervening to disperse crowds.
Europe is not the only place where there is anti-mask and anti-lockdown sentiment. In April 2020, Nigerian workers rioted against lockdown measures in the city of Lagos, claiming that the lockdown prevented them from earning income. In Nigeria and in other countries, if one does not work, they do not eat. The majority of citizens in these nations live day to day with no savings. A lockdown to prevent the spread of a virus would be just as harmful or worse than being physically affected by a pandemic. Their objections were not because they don’t see the seriousness of the pandemic but rather because of the adverse effects a lockdown can have on their livelihoods. In other places, attitudes about masks and lockdowns are a bit more casual.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro openly criticizes the use of masks and downplays the seriousness of the pandemic. He even went so far as to suggest that the vaccines have the potential to turn people into crocodiles and bearded ladies. However, a national court ordered him to wear a mask while in public. Despite his disregard for the seriousness of the pandemic, Bolsonaro contracted the virus and showed a few symptoms. He also asked India to expedite deliveries of their Covishield vaccines. The latest figures show Brazil reporting over 8 million confirmed cases and over 202,000 deaths from Covid so far.
While it does not help to constantly see the world as a fetid cesspool of disease, there is the harsh reality of this pandemic. Before it ends, something has to be done in order to eradicate it. If smallpox was eradicated, so can COVID-19. It won’t be easy and it will take time but it will also take the cooperation of individuals to make that happen. It may not be an entirely uniform effort (hardly anything in life ever is) but in places like New Zealand, the disease is close to being completely gone and it wasn’t done by individuals going against advice and claiming to be violated by restrictions.
Along with the aversion to masks and lockdowns is the resentment toward a vaccine. So far, the companies BioNtech from Germany as well as Pfizer and Moderna from the U.S., all of them pharmaceutical companies, developed vaccines to combat the COVID-19 virus. However, fears of potential harm and personal invasion have spurred some individuals to refuse being vaccinated. These fears include the vaccine altering a person’s DNA and microchips being embedded into the vaccine and injected into a person, all of these and others based on propaganda that claims vaccines are unsafe and an attack on personal liberty.
In the book’s essay about freedom, I mention how certain things like money and consumerism are aligned with the idea of freedom. That is still largely the case but now, the element of politics (particularly, what is described as “conservative” or “right-wing” politics) is thrown into the mix. This is based on the claim that so-called conservative perspectives are silenced in outlets like social media, at least in the U.S. Again, the perspective is held by these conservatives is that masks and lockdowns are an imposition on personal freedom.
Nowadays it seems like anything as benign and as far removed from politics like face masks and vaccines suddenly become issues of political contention which is then assumed to affect personal freedom in adverse ways. This is especially the case in extremist ideologies regardless if it is extreme “left” or “right.”
Having questions or even doubts about a proposed measure or solution is understandable given the circumstances. The question is, how much research does a person actually do and what sources do they come across in that research? Perhaps the next questions after that are, how much does a person factor in the amount of personal freedom affected by what they find and how do they respond to that information?
With regards to news sources, just because something pops up on Google doesn’t mean the source it comes from is reliable. A website titled Iffy News contains an index of online news outlets “with low factual-reporting levels” and their Media Bias/Fact Check or MBFC rating. The site was founded by Barrett Golding, a former radio executive producer and Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow. He says the site is “anti-bullshit” and plans to expand it to include responses from indexed outlets. News sources like the ones listed on Iffy News can contain extremist ideologies which can also affect a susceptible person’s perception of freedom.
One of the sites listed on Iffy News’ index is InfoWars. That site and its founder are notorious for their extremist propaganda which generally leans extremely conservative. It also promotes biased and unsubstantiated claims about government, organizations, and individuals. The founder of InfoWars also promotes nutritional supplements with dubious claims of effectiveness which are refuted by health experts. The general sense of InfoWars and similar sites is highly nationalistic, almost if not entirely to the point of being radical. A component that is present throughout what they report is freedom and how it is affected by that which its founder and followers object to.
This nationalistic sense of freedom that is promoted by believers of ideologies which promote such extreme beliefs has already had adverse effects in this age of the COVID-19 pandemic. The current U.S. president at the time of this writing held rallies for his reelection during the last part of 2020 when the pandemic was in full force. Throughout that time and even before, he downplayed the effects of it and then became infected with the coronavirus which he was then hospitalized for. His lackadaisical attitude toward the pandemic as well as his desire to mass large crowds of people in enclosed spaces just to hear him talk led to attendees being infected with the coronavirus. A study by Stanford University researchers found up to 30,000 people were infected and over 700 deaths occurred as a result of individuals attending those political rallies.
And if that weren’t bad enough, the attempted coup in Washington DC on January 6, 2021 where supporters of the outgoing president broke into the Capitol and tried to stop the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the next president is being regarded as a “superspreader event.” In photos and other images, few if any of the rioters wore masks.
It’s easy to argue about “rights” and “liberties” whenever someone or some group sees itself threatened by some regulation. However clumsily these mandates were put in place by governments, they were ultimately done with the public’s wellbeing in mind. One also has to remember that the world has not experienced a pandemic like COVID-19 in over 100 years. In that time, the difference between how people lived then versus now is like night and day. Even then, masks had their share of controversy but nothing like in during the current pandemic. Despite ongoing controversy regarding the efficacy of masks, there is a general consensus among medical professionals that they do work in minimizing infection.
When something like a pandemic occurs where the outcome is more harmful if nothing is done to prevent it, any attempt to curb its effects would naturally curtail activities and movements that individuals freely do on a daily basis. It is not done maliciously although those who scream oppression would say otherwise. It is done for the sake of safety. Unfortunately, there is rumor after rumor of government and agencies inching toward a complete suppression of individual rights for the sake of control, all of it based on unsubstantiated claims and hearsay.
Then there is the claim that mask mandates are “unconstitutional.” It can be safely assumed that most individuals in the U.S. have not read or are completely unfamiliar with the text and meaning of their national constitution to know whether or not mask mandates are unconstitutional. They also likely don’t know that states have their own constitution which is separate from the national one everyone claims to be protected by. Whenever a regulation takes place that people don’t like, they’ll shout from the rooftops claiming that it is “unconstitutional” because they believe that this piece of paper they haven’t fully read or understood guarantees they can do whatever they goddamn well please– freedom at its supposed core.
An observation made in the essay I wrote says:
“This idea of ‘I do what I want’ and ‘fuck everyone else’ is the logic that passes for ‘freedom’ for some people.”
That’s the problem with this idea of freedom: it slaps people around just so others can move about in their own way. In 1919, an American judicial philosopher named Zechariah Chafee wrote in his essay “Freedom of Speech in Wartime” for the Harvard Law Review:
“Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”
Put in today’s context with regard to COVID-19, a person’s right not to wear a mask ends where another’s health and wellbeing begins.
What has resulted from all that “freedom” chanting and “don’t tread on me” attitude is a growing death toll. It is not just with COVID-19 but with practically any sort of negligent behavior. The more “freedom” people seem to want, as they perceive freedom be, the more it seems they shoot themselves in the proverbial foot, so to speak. They want freedom to gather and not wear masks and in the meantime, individuals continue to be infected while some of them suffer the worst effects of this disease to the point of death. In this day and age, if an individual wants freedom as they see fit, they better be prepared to literally pay for it with their life, if not someone else’s.
Perspectives 