Since the first moment of lock-down in the Chinese state Hubei, many western political analysts called it a huge success of the Chinese authorities to fight the pandemic. As the stats started to decrease in China, these analysts found themselves equipped with enough evidence to undermine the democratic values of Western societies. After some European and American institutes raised doubts over the success of China in flattening the curve immediately, the evidence issued by the Chinese government did not seem to be clear enough to support such an idea. However, as the time evolved and the experience of Italy, Spain and other Western countries came in hand, not many analysts could argue that the Chinese authorities were transparent, honest and efficient in fighting the pandemics. Unfortunately, the Chinese society has been imposed with daily propaganda on the great success that their government has achieved, making them proud of something that possibly had not been achieved.
Now that the Western countries have eased the protective measures in their borders, one question is how the political parties will use the reaction of the governments regarding the pandemic? In the United States, Joe Biden blames Donald Trump for what he acknowledged as “irresponsible” reactions of the President. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni undermined the path of regulating the quarantine as she called it “not democratic and embarrassing for the government concerning the Italian constitution”. Whatever the relationship between how democratic a government is and how it reacted to the outbreak turns out to be, COVID19 will certainly affect the democracies in Europe and Northern America in medium to long-run.
There are still questions on whether the quick and aggressive policy of imposing lock-down was “essential”, although there is not much debate on how efficient and effective these policies were. There are cases like the Netherlands that never imposed restrictive measures as the Italian and Spanish governments did, and yet these cases successfully flattened the curve with only protective measures. On the other hand, the United States simply failed in maintaining what could slow the pandemic down with Donald Trump’s reopening mottos. Concerned about the depth of the recession just a few months before the elections, President Trump insisted on simplifying the issue and even spread inaccurate information in his election rallies. At the end of the day, Donald Trump simply failed: he could not sacrifice the health system to prevent an economic recession. His actions brought both health and economic crisis in the United States,
In conclusion, no one can claim that imposing a lock-down to control a pandemic virus is somehow “democratic”. It might be one of the few exceptions that security is above freedom, as the health of the individuals is constantly and hard being affected. Keeping the efficiency and effectiveness of these measures in mind, countries have been trying different scales of measures that somehow many of them failed. With mask or without a mask, with gloves or without gloves, the curves seem to be stubbornly resistant to flatten. As it seems, we have to learn how to live with COVID19, just the way we did with Influenza.
Siavash Mohades 