After the spread of coronavirus became increased, countries issued lockdown or state of emergency. In order to prevent spread of the virus, hopefully these have been having keeping infection minimum in society. However, there should be a discussion on whether we have independency and autonomy to overcome this pandemic. Now governments authorized restriction, a lot of people around the world demands that government take measures or give assistance, but we should know that government cannot perfectly meet our demands and prevent the spread. Since a lot of time have passed, we cannot change our past, but for the future we should learn from this incident and at least be aware of the possibility of transformation of our sense of feeling to centralized organizing system.
The lockdown is put in place on 17 March in France[1]. People are obliged to have a paper that clarifies the necessity to leave home[2]. On 13 April, Emmanuel Macron announced that the “more strict confinement” is put in place to 11 May[3].
United Kingdom, based on the speech of Prime Minister Boris Johnson on 23 March[4], limits activities to necessary shopping, “one form of exercise a day”, “medical need”, “travelling to and from work” if cannot be managed from home. As Prime Minister said, if people don’t observe these, the police has authority to “enforce them”.
In Japan, Shinzo Abe, the 98th Prime Minister[5], declared state of emergency in 7 regions in the early of April[6] to 6 May[7]. It requests citizens not to go out without “necessity for maintaining life”[8], targeting 70 to 80% of social contact[9].
If the government didn’t declare their request or legal constraint on citizens the mass goes outside as usual isn’t acceptable. Citizens voluntarily should change their behavior by refraining from going to places where people gather together, and taking possible preventive measures to infection. The behavior of the public before should be changed before lockdown or state of emergency by themselves. It’s been seen that influencers’ message that asks to stay home. These inter-citizens movement makes sense in terms of self-governance and democracy as well.
It is not saying that the government don’t need to declare state of emergency. As it changed people’s behavior it would contribute to prevent COVID-19 spread. But if people voluntarily take proper behavior and don’t go out without necessity, governments wouldn’t have to restrict behavior of its citizenry by law and they can declare state of emergency just to alarm throughout the countries.
If people could call on each other not to carelessly goes to city, there’s no need for the government to enforce law that legally oblige limit citizens’ actions. This is, of course, not saying that if people have freedom even in pandemic they can go out as before the spread, rather this has to do with that people choose not to exert their freedom while keeping their freedom in their place. Rather than giving their freedom to the government, having it in their hand is better. Some would say that without their consent government put their law in place, this is true, but if we could make ordinary our sensible action that more people do our best to take preventive measure to infection we can at least expand the circle of resistance to authorized measures of governments.
The present state feels like giving up keeping freedom in our place and being dependent on authority. If we are trusted from government or have enough demonstration that there’s no need to put restricting laws in effect, we might be able to ordinalize that authority’s declaration which doesn’t take freedom away from our hands. Moreover what we should care is that the transition of this epidemic to the recovery of our life will not be so much obvious, centralized system and people’s sense to surveillance will be unnoticeably normalized as those of during this epidemic without recalling what it was like before for a large part of people.
There are countries which have areas with huge traffic forcefully had to take lock-down or close area so that they can cease the spread of virus, in those countries there had to be lockdown or declaration of state of emergency. But there’s still doubt that if citizens stay home and take preventive conduct by themselves carefully it might not be inevitable to put legal restraint in effect. Areas with with huge traffic need the lockdown measure but strict measure that law authorizes people’s behavior in detail is not necessarily needed though it depends people’s self-refraining.
As for the economic assistance from government, this is sensitive to say but it cannot be imagined that so wide range of people can be covered by government in a lot of countries for a long time. The invention of vaccine is estimated to be next year[10]. The assistance from government could not cover enough even those who in the critical phase.
The ending period of epidemic is unclear because even if we could have invented vaccine, find out better medicine, a large part of people became immune, the ending of this pandemic would gradually be united with ordinary life. The transformation of our feeling towards central authority or centralized organizing system could be infiltrated into the world. As of the early or middle of April 2020, it seems that people are dependent on authority without enough autonomy. In democracy, citizens should be autonomous and maintaining independency to possible extent as a primary principle in a sense that we think by ourselves and participate in building our community. As far as looked at, even though this pandemic is critical situation, paying attention to the unclear ending of this pandemic, we have to be conscious of the risk of dependency that could remain even after the world recover ordinary life.
Not denying the necessity of state of emergency, but it is more related to mindset of people and the future world. It makes sense to give request to government in communicating with them, but in the meantime we should be aware that government cannot meet our all of demand and as a primary principle we should think by ourselves to overcome this difficulty we face not just being dependent on government, questioning whether this centralized system is what we want in the aftermath.
[1] BBC. Coronavirus: Paris bans daytime outdoor exercise. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52202700?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c302m85qenyt/france&link_location=live-reporting-story Published 7 April 2020 Accessed 12 April 2020.
[2] France 24. France in lockdown as govt says it could nationalise large companies in crisis. https://www.france24.com/en/20200317-france-in-lockdown-as-gov-t-says-it-could-nationalise-large-companies-in-crisis Published 17 March 2020 Accessed 12 April 2020.
[3] Le Monde. Emmanuel Macron annonce une prolongation du confinement jusqu’au 11 mai. Around 0:33-. Published 13 May 2020. Accessed 17 April 2020.
[4] UK government. PM address to the nation on coronavirus: 23 March 2020. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-to-the-nation-on-coronavirus-23-march-2020 Accessed 12 April 2020.
[5] https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/98_abe/meibo/daijin/abe_shinzo.html Accessed 10 April 2020.
[6] Press conference of Shinzo Abe, Japanese Prime Minister, declaring state of emergency. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2mhFTbaML8 Around 4:30-. Accessed 12 April 2020.
[7] Press conference of Shinzo Abe, Japanese Prime Minister, declaring state of emergency.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2mhFTbaML8 Around 7:43-. Accessed 12 April 2020.
[8] Press conference of Shinzo Abe, Japanese Prime Minister, declaring state of emergency. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2mhFTbaML8 Around 6:17-. Accessed 12 April 2020.
[9] Press conference of Shinzo Abe, Japanese Prime Minister, declaring state of emergency. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2mhFTbaML8 Around 7:49-. Accessed 12 April 2020.
[10] Channel 4 News. How close are we to a vaccine or cure for coronavirus? https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-how-close-are-we-to-a-vaccine-or-cure-for-coronavirus Published 17 March 2020, Accessed 13 April 2020.
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