COVID-19 and Democracy

Today is Sunday and I can leave my computer for some time and enjoy a coffee in the garden with absolute silence, right? I don’t want to mention my personal problems, but like most people around the world I’m also negatively effected by COVID-19 which brought a few questions to my mind. I want to briefly share those with you today.

Since January, coronavirus destroyed lots of lives and it keeps destroying, and who knows, how long and how much more, it will… Regarding my personal conditions, I kept an eye in detail with coronavirus news at the beginning, until the day that my partner shared an article about how we are getting negatively effected by following up COVID-19 news.

I’m not planning to go in that direction this morning, but let me tell the main concept. When you learn or know about something that you don’t have control over nor any chance to deal with, then there is no purpose, neither anything beneficial for you, to receive that information. When there is something threatening you, body spikes adrenaline to help you get out of that condition, but in such cases where you don’t have anything to do, it only harms you physically and emotionally.

Today I want to discuss democracy and how does it interfere with COVID-19. I don’t want to mention specific country names or races but you will get my point.

Let’s briefly classify the world. What we know generally about different countries or regions, at least how I think while categorizing the world. There are some countries which are heavily running on capitalism. Even though they use the term “democracy” heavily, can we expect to see too many social rights? To be fair, I personally do not think human being deserves guaranteed social rights as well, but again maybe we can have an argument about it on another day but not in today’s discussion.

Let’s put the well-known description of democracy and get into details.

“Democracy does guarantee the rights of minority and settles absolute equality amongst people”

Does it really? Did we experience this during the COVID-19 pandemic? Personally, as I mentioned before, I was not expecting to see this from capitalist countries, nor countries that are officially communist or socialist, suppose to be delivering equal opportunities for everyone under the roof but running heavily despotic capitalism in practice.

We have a general opinion when you are going towards the west, democracy is rising, but keep in mind about “Wild West” term.

Just a brief note; “Wild West” term originally comes from those days, when America’s west was not settled by white people and where you could find enormous opportunities out of that chaos if you are ready to take risks under that chaotic conditions.

It’s obvious for me that for high populated countries and regions, it’s ridiculous to expect having human rights, but again it can be another day’s discussion.

Let’s come to the point of what I was expecting to see and how I was surprised to see reality and started considering what democracy is.

Europe, especially Northern Europe, where GDP(Gross Domestic Product) per capita, I mean PPP(Purchasing Power Parity) generally high in comparison to the rest of the world. We can expect to see a high level of human rights in correspondence with this power, right? Social rights should be best etc., right? But do they? Let’s discuss these…

First of all, what I’ve noticed is, they didn’t take a high level of measures cause it was declared as being not democratic. Necessary measures, to slow down COVID-19, was considered as restrictions for freedom and cannot be ruled amongst democratic countries. I don’t mean that they are hiding behind this idea. They funded companies to keep their employees etc. with their financial power.

But is this really called a democracy? Let’s remember the definition. Minority rights; what do we mean with minority rights and equality amongst people. My understanding of this phrase is protecting the weak and vulnerable ones. Let’s now discuss were they able to achieve that?

Nursing Homes

People living in nursing homes are generally vulnerable and they need additional care. Especially regarding any kind of pandemic, they’re the ones that have a high priority to be taken care of.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we heard the bad news. Almost 50% of people from Nursing homes lost their lives.

People with a lacking awareness

When were are considering lots of things under sociological headliners we always set ‘Education Level’ as a parameter and build up stuff around that.

So that means we actually think and believe that education level improves awareness and perception. This is the toughest part to argue cause it’s like politics or religion topics it’s almost impossible to have mathematical proof.

I need to tell my personal opinion here, I find those people, living their usual lives which they consider as their personal choice and freedom, are crossing the border of freedom zone of people who are worried about coronavirus and trying to protect themselves. Living however they want to live means putting others at higher risk of getting infected.

Employment

When people start working in a new job there is a period called probation which is settled for both sides to know each other and understand if they are happily collaborating with each other. We heard that during pandemic this period was abused by employers that they took the advantage of asking people to let go easily cause they were not protected by “democratic” system.

Please don’t get me wrong, I absolutely do not think employees should be always protected from employers. We have so many cases to observe employees are abusing the system like declaring false health conditions which really puts in the difficult conditions the ones who are really struggling with health issues.

I can give more examples but I want to keep it short.

“World is wild and you cannot find a place where there is absolute equality is settled”

I want to finalize reminding the origin of the word Democracy. It is originated with the combination of two words from Latin which are dēmos and kratia.

“People” & “to rule”

Have a nice Sunday in peace