Through the pandemic we have experienced the most rigorous expansion of government power and dictates since the 1930s. Governments have imposed lockdowns, quarantines, mask mandates, and now vaccine mandates to the point of creating a 2-tier society where the vaccinated can go about some once normal activities (e.g. indoor dining and entering public venues), while the unvaccinated are excluded from social life and are systematically fired from jobs or discharged from military service if they decline to be vaccinated with the new gene modification treatments.
The science is clear that masks, lockdowns and quarantines don’t work. The vaccines do reduce severe symptoms at a cost of many serious side effects, but they do not prevent the vaccinated from spreading and getting COVID. The asymptomatic infected among the vaccinated become the new super-spreaders.
None of this concerns government officials. They found out that people are compliant with nonsensical orders, and they enjoy it. As a result, governments are already planning to declare other events as health emergencies, so they can use the same emergency powers to demand compliance with unpopular dictates as a way to advance policy agendas.
Already, politicians are planning to declare climate change a health emergency to order personal carbon allowances that could limit travel by automobile or airplane and require tracking devices to enforce compliance. Of course, climate change is only one of many policy fields where the public health excuse could be used for government control of private decisions.
This trend is inconsistent with freedom and personal choice. The virus will fade in the next few years. The political and economic damage will last for decades.
Sven Franssen