Falling Back, 25. Individual Rights or Public Health?

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If yesterday I said justice will end up working out, today I have to say the opposite. Last week, amid the steep rise in Covid cases in several cities, Madrid foremost, the central government decreed a small lockdown, with no one allowed in or out of certain cities. (Cities of over a hundred thousand inhabitants, with an infection rate of over 500 per 100,000.) 

Today, the Superior Court of the region of Madrid declared the lockdowns illegal without a general state of alarm declared, because they impinge upon individual rights. These are the same judges that upheld the rather lopsided and ineffectual restrictions the regional government imposed on only a part of affected areas, and that did not admit a case against the managers of various publicly owned elderly residences where many older people died because controls against the coronavirus were lax in the spring. Politics, much?

That must be what some of the judges would like to see happen. Another national state of alarm would turn many people against the leftist government. But a moment has come in this second wave, as it came in the first, when individual rights are subservient to the greater good. It's like the mask mandate. It goes against our rights to be told what to put on our bodies, but when it guarantees public health, we have to sacrifice our comfort and individuality. It's a fine line, but when it comes to public health, the greater good trumps individual rights. 

This reminds me of one cost-cutting measure the conservative PP implemented some years ago. I believe it's been changed since then. They decreed that immigrants without papers could not access public health care. If they wanted to see a doctor, they would have to pay. Many didn't, a few probably died, and very likely the health of people surrounding them was also imperiled. That went against the public health, too. I am sure there were cases of infectious diseases that went untreated, and probably spread to other people, such as tuberculosis. It's also inhumane. A person who suffers a life-threatening illness should not have to choose between paying for treatment and eating.

Yet, that is what too many Americans, in one of the richest countries in the world, are facing. Either because they're unemployed, or simply can't afford a policy without a large initial payment, they don't go to the doctor when they need to. The death count for Covid has reached, officially, 210,000. But I think the real number is probably higher, because of many people who probably couldn't afford to go to the hospital and ended up dying at home.

More will die if we just look down at our navels and forget we are part of a larger community, that we have to help keep healthy.

Life continues.

Quarantine, Social Distance, Lockdown


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