A Look at How Rest of World Is Living With COVID

I check out periodically COVID-related developments around the world. Comparison sets you free and, if you are an American, it tends to lessen your COVID blues.

When you wallow in a pandemic-induced misery, you can always cheer up by moving to Florida or Texas. That is what many Americans have done, complements of federalism.

Others are not as lucky.

In unitarian systems such as post-Communist Russia and Communist China, the size of the country does not translate into any zones of freedom. Moscow and Bejing dictate; the subjects obey.

In China they jab 3-year-old children. No questions are allowed. In Russia unjabbed senior citizens are ordered into permanent quarantine for four months. Everyone else gets a week off, or else.

Equally arbitrarily, in Belarus the dictatorship has just suspended the mask mandate and other restrictions. So it goes.

The severity of the measures reflects the nature of the regime implementing them. Generally, despotic regimes are more severe in executing the COVID rules; and democratic regimes are less so.

European states do vary among themselves in size and politics, including COVID policies, but, generally, they follow the Diktat of Brussels and the example of Berlin.

However, here’s the rule of thumb: If a populist orientation governs, COVID restrictions are less. A change of government dictates usually a change of policy.

Last month the government changed in Czechia. It immediately brought the COVID restrictions back, including on foreign travel. On the other hand, Bulgaria’s new interim cabinet has complied with new U.S. COVID travel rules and ended up stranding some Americans returning home with adopted children.

Nonetheless, unlike in post-totalitarian and latently totalitarian societies, democracies can turn to the system of checks and balances to make their lives less coronavirus-regime onerous.

For example, in Spain a court has recently decided that the government must reimburse about 1 million people ticketed for violating some COVID restrictions. More significantly, the nation’s highest court ruled that the second round of lockdowns imposed last year was unconstitutional.

As far as various responses to the pandemic, we can now discern some patterns: at the top and the grassroots. There seems to be an elite consensus in most places about the need to vaccinate and quarantine, in particular for the unvaccinated as in Austria.

As a result of such policy there has emerged what many Europeans call “COVID apartheid.” The unvaccinated feel discriminated against because they are excluded from normal social activities.

Their freedom of movement is constrained and they are denied some basic services, including use of public transportation, public facilities, and at least some public businesses. Restaurants, libraries, concert halls and other such venues are off limits to them.

The folks now know that ubiquitous vaxing does not thwart COVID from mutating. Consequently, the vaccine becomes less effective, necessitating new shots and boosters, as is evident in hypervaxed Holland.

Government overreach, elite sneering, vaccine inefficiency, and virus mutation breed popular distrust. In Germany most people who are not vaccinated yet refrain from complying out of mistrust and spite.

By the way, German federalism notwithstanding, the near unanimity among the German states regarding restrictive COVID policies offers no haven for alternatives.

The conscientious objectors at the receiving end of restrictions beg to differ, though. For example, Australia has implemented some of most severe restrictions to combat COVID. In September violent riots shut down a number of cities Down Under, in particular in Melbourne.

Anti-COVID demonstrations are a rule in Europe.

A weekly occurrence in France, their participants combine their anger against “COVID apartheid,” as evidenced by the duty to acquire the “Green Pass,” with other pet peeves they blame on the government.

Hence, French President Emmanuel Macron’s re-election prospects are threatened.

In Italy, Estonia, Poland, and Switzerland, for the same reasons, the people likewise take to the streets and, occasionally, blow up in violence. In Belgium they crack down harshly on all sorts of unauthorized gatherings, from rock concerts, sports games, and political rallies. It is so elsewhere.

The powers-that-be are satiated so they will continue to err on the side of caution; the bureaucrats will not miss any chance to enhance their power; and the folks will chafe at the bit. Most will bear their cross in silence. A minority will take to the streets.

But that is what happens among us, humans, pandemic or no.