What is a life worth? What do we agree to sacrifice of our freedom to save a life? Our life… or that of a stranger? A young or an old?
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
We did not ask ourselves the question so bluntly at the start of the pandemic. Do you remember, we were talking about a “war”?
But we come back to that, basically, two years later. At the very beginning, we talked about protecting “the most vulnerable”, but no one really knew if he himself was not at risk.
Fear has been diluted over the months, vaccines and variants.
I will pose the question in a less personal way: what is politically acceptable deprivation of liberty for “the common good”?
The answer varies from country to country. Quebec, Korea and Texas responded very differently to these vital questions.
And, in any given state, the answer varies over time. What was acceptable two years ago, when the victims had a name, a face, a story, is no longer so two years later here.
I’m not even questioning the reopening of “everything”, the end of masks and the vaccine passport.
I just watch us. I try to watch us go. We are so happy! Finally, some air!
However, with today’s data, the Quebec of two years ago would be half closed. There are still more than 1,000 people in hospitals due to COVID-19. It happened during the first wave, from April 16 to June 5, 2020. Then, from December 26, 2020 to February 5, 2021.
In the current wave, there have been more than 1,000 COVID-19 patients hospitalized for two and a half months (we exceeded 3,400 at the top), which in itself is a long-term record. The number is decreasing, but not so fast. And already, a new wave is measurable in Europe in hospitals – so soon here too, if we are to believe the health history.
That, our experts say, our government knows, and we suspect it, even if we don’t really want to know.
Of course, the vaccine changes many things. Treatments too. We die less. But we still die. Ten, fifteen, twenty people a day at the “trough” of the wave, that’s not nothing.
Except that we are no longer afraid. More so. Or perhaps, between the risk of dying and the price of deprivation of freedom, the cursor has moved with time, with wear and tear, with sadness. We cannot be in perpetual mourning. A half-mast flag will do the trick this year.
A life without seeing each other, without touching each other, without society, is acceptable for a time. But that’s not life, huh?
Why did Florida and so many US states experience almost no restrictions after the first wave passed?
For political reasons, it will be said. It’s not false. Because of misinformation, too. Without a doubt.
But why has this politics and disinformation taken root so well in some states and not in others? We should perhaps look at society… the relationship to “freedom”. To individualism. We could, it seems to me, make a correlation between the compulsory wearing of motorcycle helmets and the severity of health measures in American states. Between the local tax rate (which is the redistribution of individual income to the state) and the restrictions of Public Health.
Schools are closed today in Shanghai, China’s largest city – 27 million people.
However, in this whole country of 1.4 billion human beings, “only” 3,400 cases were reported on Sunday. That’s more than anything the country has seen since the first wave.
I know, we are wary of official Chinese data. Some may have believed that the testing frenzy we talked about during the Olympics, or staff in full body suits, was some sort of health spectacle. It wasn’t. China is really in a logic of COVID zero, and there have been very, very few cases relatively.
If, unfortunately, you are in a building, neighborhood or city in China where only a few cases have been detected, your entire building, neighborhood or city (if the cases are scattered) will be locked down. And hop, everyone in line for the test, quarantine, etc.
Olympic Games volunteers, tested daily in our “bubble”, where no cases were detected at the end of the Olympics, still had to self-isolate for three weeks in a motel at the end of the Games before returning to live in their apartments from Beijing, on the other side of the fence…
You will say to me: one cannot compare a totalitarian country to a constitutional democracy.
Exactly, that’s what I want to do. Observe our relationship to freedom. Our tolerance for the deprivation of liberty.
In South Korea, the government has maintained a zero COVID-19 policy that is less restrictive than China, but still very rigorous for a democratic country. The number of cases was miniscule, the deaths fewer than in Quebec, for a population six times larger.
Now Omicron is creating a record outbreak – 350,000 cases a day, unheard of. Restrictions fall on businesses, curfew is decreed, etc.
We don’t have the same relationship to social life, to “us” everywhere.
Well, in China itself, we are starting to judge that COVID zero is no longer tenable. And some talk about learning to “live with the virus”.
As we decided to do here, just a little faster, without really knowing what will be next.
Two years later, we no longer calculate the risk in the same way, and the word “war” is no longer relevant, since it is a little too much.