By Avneet Singh
For every public health expert justifying lock-down and quarantine, there is an equal and opposite expert saying it was not necessary.
The pandemic is unprec”Civil Liberties Meets Civil Decency.”edented in history and there is no precedent to guide us. Every official in a position of authority will want to be seen as responsible and suggest the safest option.
The latest guidelines from CDC are clear: “maintaining 6-feet social distancing remains important to slowing the spread of the virus. CDC is additionally advising the use of simple cloth face coverings to slow the spread of the virus”.
Should There Be A Law?
There should not be a law forcing people to wear a mask. People are aware of the dangers. They might choose to socially distance themselves. Closed public spaces such as supermarkets already have signs requiring the use of masks.
It should not be criminalized with police handing out fines. It will be just another step towards criminalizing relatively trivial offenses for which there are other effective ways to discourage it.
Harvey Silverglate wrote his book ‘Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent’. His book is “is a frightening reminder that the federal “justice” system in this country seems to have picked up where the Soviets left off.
We suffer from a combination of vague, expansive
laws, the drug war, and prosecutors who are ruthless, relentless, and who face no consequences for their own lawbreaking. That has turned federal criminal law into a conviction machine, sweeping up the innocent along with the guilty.”
His second book ‘The Tyranny of Good Intentions’ “recounts a disturbing number of cases documenting how investigators and prosecutors decide on a target, then find a crime to pin on him”. Laws are selectively applied and new laws will be too.
Listen to “Masks and face covering has become a case of "Civil Liberties Meets Civil Decency."” on Spreaker.
Civil Decency
An effective way to change people’s behavior is via peer pressure. Just as No-touch greetings, Social Distancing and many other practices became the norm, so will wearing a mask. More education, stronger communities, and less government almost always is the answer. It is
also cheaper than more police and more fines.Informed people who see themselves as part of a community and are not in fear of the
government are likely to make rational decisions.
Civil Liberties
People’s concerns should not be brushed aside or overridden by unpopular laws. People may not be able to articulate well why they mistrust the government, but their sentiment is rational, and their actions are driven by those sentiments.
Extended lock-down; decades of public mistrust in government, corporations and with each other; and proliferation of fake news create a culture of mistrust. People are also wary of giving up their liberties and rightly see the government becoming more powerful and intrusive.
People emptying shelves of toilet paper was an emotional response to a rational fear of impending doom. Toilet paper is the new Consumer Fear Index.
When people have rational and subconscious trust in their government, corporations and in each other, they will not panic, and willingly co-operate. They will not look for sinister motivesor see any new development as an attack on their liberty.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a testing time for us all individually and as a community. We have allowed deep-seated social problems to fester for decades. They are now coming home to roost.
There are bigger dilemmas are on the horizon. To vaccinate or not to vaccinate.
Voice of Mankind is a non-profit Think Tank working to influence public opinion on issues that affect us all. We are here to make sense of this changing world.
