Since the end of the Omicron wave, Public Health has let us know that with regard to the pandemic, we have changed the paradigm: essentially, we would have gone from a collective, Quebec, citizen responsibility to an individual responsibility. This paradigm shift could be explained not by a different evolution of the global pandemic, but simply because the population is “tired” and no longer intends to follow instructions that restrict everyone’s freedoms.
In a democracy, what the majority wants is authoritative; the state has therefore changed its paradigm. And our specialists, our scientists to take up this new paradigm of individual responsibility, even justifying it scientifically: what are health measures against a virus worth if citizens no longer want to follow them?
Let us return to this new paradigm to probe some of its social consequences. Relying on individual responsibility means, we are told, taking responsibility for one’s health and making the personal decisions one deems necessary to preserve it. In other words, if in my age category, the risk of being seriously ill from COVID is low, then it seems reasonable and responsible to drop personal protective measures.
Of course, one could argue that this could have negative consequences for others who are not in this situation. We would then be justified in replying that we have changed the paradigm and that our freedom no longer stops with that of others, but rather with our sole interest, here our health. In this context, the individual responsibility of vulnerable people is to shut themselves up at home to avoid crossing paths with other citizens who exercise their individual responsibility differently.
Is it necessary here to recall that the word “responsibility” precisely implies taking account of others in our actions? That’s the meaning we give to that word, it seems to me, when we talk about parental responsibility, for example. Is this really the paradigm shift that the State is proposing to us?
There is “freedom” and freedom. A few weeks ago, in Ottawa and elsewhere in Canada, the “freedom” of those for whom this rallying cry was precisely opposed to collective responsibility was expressed. A few weeks later, after ridiculing them, the authorities seem to agree with them. Have they been contaminated? One might think so, to see our governments refuse to take any coercive health measures in the face of the undeniable arrival of a sixth wave which will just as unquestionably have its share of increasingly anonymous victims.
Resolutely turned towards its electoral future, the government brandishes its new watchword: all to your individual responsibilities. “Freedom” is on the way to winning its epistemological battle against the freedom that we have always associated with social responsibility. It is good, it seems to me, what we taught in the old paradigm, from daycare services, to our young people: my freedom ends where that of the other begins.