Politics and Covid-19 Pandemic

The pandemic was a catastrophe for the globe in humanitarian, economic and political
perspectives. In Germany almost 80 thousand people died and economic crisis has reached a
paroxysm. Today has been more than one year since the first Covid 19 was reported and society
in general is still unsatisfied with social distancing measures. Political and economic decision
makers are going through dilemmas that is completely new in the history of our modern
societies. Indeed, when countries realized the Covid-19 mass spread could mean the exhaustion
of hospitals capacity and the premature death of millions of people around the world,
politicians and health experts chose to restrict citizen’s freedom and to establish a lockdown.
While, at first sight, it seemed as the rational decision to preserve lives by containing the spread
of the virus, today many weights the consequences and the sacrifices society goes through due
to lockdown. The question that naturally arises is: What moral dilemma are politicians facing
when taking political decisions on whether or not to continue lockdown? It is fair to
acknowledge that no country lockdown the same way and the affirmation here are generally for
European countries if not state the contrary.

The first dilemma faced by decision makers was an epistemic dilemma. By choosing to establish
or to continue with lockdown they were faced with many moral requirements that conflict with
each other and they hardly know which one should be preferred. The imperative was the
following: how to preserve the greater quantity of lives, while not destroying fundamental
rights and allowing minimum economic activity? It seems, at first sight, an easy dilemma
because one would hardly argue that lives should not be the priority. Indeed, what’s the
importance of economic activity if people are being sacrificed for it? In the beginning of the
pandemic of covid-19, countries had to answer this question fast and take action before the
situation got aggravated. Around the world, leaders have chosen to lockdown the citizens,
something never happened before in history. We were sacrificing our right to move, some may
say our freedom to go, in order to preserve our lives. People were allowed only to move for
essential matters. That meant: help someone and get food. All other activities had to be
delayed or not adapted to the new reality. Job’s offices became home offices and proving one
human major characteristic we have adapted. Not all governments agreed on the number,
scale and timeframe of interventions in the pandemic. However, all agreed that economic and
social costs would be necessary in order to bring down infections and death.

Time passed and the question of the legitimacy of lockdown was risen. Are we only sacrificing
our right to move? What consequences is the lockdown bringing on people’s lives? Is it a strict
lockdown the only possibility? At this stage, politicians had this time to evaluate the efficacy of
lockdown and weight the costs that came from it. The costs were astronomical. As social
distancing rules economics activity plumbed and unemployment reached high levels. Major
firms were going bankrupt and whole industries entered in life-or-death crisis (the aviation
industry in special). Mental condition of millions were put into pressure, and many started
sufferings from anxiety and depression. Already an upward trend in recent times, depression
was widely recognized as a consequence of social distancing and lack of human contact. Young
people were the most affected as it is at this age that humans start to build first long-lasting
relationship and social life plays a major part. Children did not have access to formal-in-school
education and recent graduated students had to wait for economic activity to restart to have
the change of finding jobs. From a health perspective, the spread of the virus was getting more
controlled and death rates were going down. It seemed as the lockdown served its purposes
but the costs seemed also too high and society no longer wanted to accepted strict social
distancing. Governments had to evaluate new decisions in order to respond to both sides of the
dilemma.
With the situation getting better, politicians were faced with two types of dilemmas. First an
obligation dilemma. Society wanted to enjoy again its fundamental right to move freely, wanted
children to go back to school and to restore general mental health. But go back to normal was
not possible as the risk was too high. New actions were obligatory, and safety measures were
taken while lockdown was relaxed. Politicians in some countries allowed people to move freely
in a determined time slot and others established a curfew policy. By allowing people to retake
its freedom to move, while being alert to the condition of hospitals, commerce started to
function again and a middle ground was found. The virus seemed to be somehow controlled
and the new normal seemed to be working. The problem came when the inaccuracy and
miscalculation of those measures became evident. This gave birth to the second dilemma,
which is a self-imposed dilemma. It was caused by the government wrong doings. By not having
enough knowledge on how to solve the situation, governments were making bets on how to re-
open. Influenced by strong private groups, politicians made the error of opening non-essential
commerce’s and allowing easy spread situations: gyms and parties. The virus contamination
went parabolic and a second wave hit Europe. The “new normal” improvised by decision
makers was not sustainable and the problem was: people had to go back to lockdown and lose
again a few fundamental rights. An ongoing process had to start again, governments needed to
consider epidemiological evidence while taking into account broader health, economics and
policy implications. According to a recent study from the London School of Economics,
lockdown measures were mostly effective at the beginning of the pandemic, and it still should
be used in places where the virus spread has reached important levels.

At the time this text is being written, the pandemic is still creating dilemmas for society and
decision makers. While almost all countries have adopted a curfew policy as the situation got
better, others are facing the apex of death and contamination. It is impossible to escape the
dilemmas imposed by such an unprecedented situation. Those can be epistemic, obligation, elf-
imposed or others. By preserving lives, we are committed to the highest value of human
existence. By adapting the lockdown to stop the decline of mental health and to give freedom
back to citizens is the way mitigate its effects. Indeed the measures to fight it should not be
worse than the virus itself.