THE EROSION OF RIGHTS DURING COVID-19?

Ross Hyde, a first-year Modern Languages Durham student considers the effect of COVID-19 on eroding the rights of individuals and argues that a critical approach should be taken to view these restrictions rather than accepting them as wholly beneficial for the greater good.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, governments across the world have imposed some of the harshest restrictions on individual rights, freedom and economic activity since World War 2 under the premise that such restrictions prevent Covid-19 from spreading and hospitalising individuals. Despite numerous protests throughout the Western world against such restrictions, polls and public behaviour have consistently shown that such restrictions have been supported by a large majority of the public throughout the pandemic. However, measures have had such large impacts on fundamental rights that they are certainly worth questioning. Which fundamental rights were denied - and in some cases, continue to be denied - to citizens during the Covid-19 pandemic as a result of lockdowns? Are ongoing vaccine passport and vaccine mandate schemes effective or legitimate? And did governments carry out sufficient cost-benefit analyses when imposing lockdowns, considering rights forfeited by them alongside lockdowns’ potential to stop Covid-19 spreading? Denial of rights can perhaps sound too theoretical: there was, more importantly, far too little analysis of what this erosion has meant for people’s daily lives since the start of 2020.

Revolutions and evolution over the past few centuries have established the bases of Western democracy, and have enshrined rights such as freedom of movement, freedom to peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, the right to privacy, the right to an education and more recently the right to healthcare. Yet all these, and many more, were denied during the Covid-19 pandemic. The right to health is perhaps the most important to look at, given that many government measures were imposed in the very name of this right in the first place. However, mental health issues worsened by 8.1% in just the first 2 months of the pandemic in the UK, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists reported that half of its psychiatrists saw increases in urgent or emergency mental health cases. Lockdown also meant that it was harder for individuals to receive treatment for health problems. The Royal College also reported a fall in routine appointments, suggesting that many were staying away until crisis point as they were put off by the difficulty of receiving face-to-face help during lockdown in the UK. Data from the MIND charity correlates this, as 25% of people that called their lines during April 2020 were unable to receive help due to a surge in demand. Additionally, calls to the national helpline Refuge were 49% higher in the first 3 weeks of the first UK lockdown than average. This evidence points to an undeniable decline in mental health during lockdown due to issues such as loneliness, anxiety, and depression being caused or worsened.

Sometimes there is a stigma around talking about mental health issues, however it can be more helpful to see it is highly related to quality of life in general. According to self-determination theory, individuals must have three basic needs in order to flourish: autonomy (having a sense of control, choice, and purpose in one’s life), competence (the feeling of being capable of achieving one’s goals and overcoming challenges), and relatedness (the need to feel connectedness and belonging with other individuals). By forcing people to stay at home with little human contact, lockdown clearly removes all three from people’s lives, and therefore the sharp increase in mental health problems was inevitable.

Physical health issues also worsened, with many being unable to see their GP due to rules or strong advice in favour of online appointments. This particularly impacted “digitally excluded groups” such as elderly people, who were also the most vulnerable to severe illness from Covid-19. According to Healthwatch, an independent body, the moving of the majority of GP appointments online led to a severe drop in the number of people from digitally excluded groups getting appointments.

Alongside disregard for mental and physical health problems, the rights of freedom of protest and religion were also trampled upon. Both of these are rights protected throughout the Western world by national laws and documents such as the US Constitution, as well as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Regardless of whether or not the event was likely to spread Covid-19, countless peaceful protests were broken up, sometimes violently, by police. Notable examples include a vigil held for Sarah Everard, a woman murdered by a police officer, being forcibly broken up by police in March 2021, and the imposition of a £10,000 fine on an NHS nurse who organised a small socially-distanced protest against government pay increase proposals. Consistent evidence and consensus from the scientific community showing the risk of spreading Covid-19 outdoors is “negligible” should have meant that there was little rationale for suspending this right in the first place. In relation to Europe, this also means that whilst ECHR-guaranteed rights are “qualified rights” there was no legitimate qualification for denying these rights as public health was not at risk. Freedom of religion was another right restricted during the pandemic, as freedom to communally worship is essential within this right. Multiple courts ruled that restrictions were not sufficiently evidence-based to warrant them in the first place, and therefore demonstrate that wide-ranging blanket restrictions do not undergo sufficient cost-benefit analyses. The Scottish Court of Session ruled church closures to be “disproportionate and unlawful”, whilst the US Supreme Court ruled in both Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo against New York in November 2020 and in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v Newsom against California in February 2021 that state governments hadn’t justified the need to deny or limit church capacity.

Although new restrictions on rights have now been reimposed in some European countries due to rising cases and the new ‘Omicron’ variant, in many countries including the US and the UK the debate on rights has largely moved onto the existence of vaccine passport or vaccine mandate schemes. This refers to the decision by either private companies or governments to require, by law, vaccination in order to enter a venue or workplace. In the case of Austria, it refers to legally-required nationwide vaccination. It is legitimate for businesses to enforce a requisite - such as vaccination - for entering their premises, due to the rights of landlords and business owners. If one restaurant had a vaccination mandate whilst the restaurant next door did not, everyone has a choice: an unvaccinated person could go to the restaurant without the vaccine requirement, whilst a vaccinated elderly person concerned about the health threat from an unvaccinated person could choose the restaurant with the requirement. This is why the efforts of some US states, such as Florida, to ban businesses from putting in place a vaccine requirement, appears irrational.

However, what is more worrying is the efforts of national governments to require vaccination in order to enter privately-owned businesses, as many European nations, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and New York do, amongst others. There is a clear violation of an individual's personal choice and right to choose what goes into their body.

The effectiveness of vaccine passports is also in doubt. According to a new scientific paper, the “transmission risk reduction gained by excluding unvaccinated people is very small for most settings”. The paper uses the measure of NNE (number of unvaccinated people that need to be excluded from a venue to prevent one Covid-19 infection from an unvaccinated person). For example, the NNE for transport is 4,699, 2,193 for work or study places, and 1,731 for public places. This suggests that the vaccine passports seen across the Western world could be infringing on individual rights for very little public health benefit.

More worrying still is Austria’s announcement that from February 2022 vaccination will be mandatory for the entire population, with those refusing likely to receive fines or a prison sentence. Austria’s vaccination rate is currently 66%, meaning that the law will deny personal choice to one-third of the population, an unjustifiable precedent, especially in a Western democracy. Since countries first started introducing vaccine mandates, the theme uttered by governing officials has consistently been that persuasion didn’t work, so resorting to coercion has been necessary.

It is very easy to see government intervention - be it lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, vaccine requirements or travel bans - as all for the ‘greater good’ and justifiable in the current Covid-19 health context. However, that makes Western democracies, for so long beacons to the world for their upholding of individual rights and freedoms where elsewhere they were nonexistent, very vulnerable to what John Stuart Mill would call ‘tyranny of the majority’. An individual does not know another individual’s mind or their motivations for doing something, and the government is only a collection of individuals. Thus coercion is dangerous as it does not convince someone to do something, it simply forces them to, which only serves to build up resentment. Western governments would do better to trust in individuals, their ability to make choices and exercise their rights, and provide better information campaigns from experts who the public trust instead of resorting to forceful methods. Doing otherwise sets a very dangerous precedent.

Bibliography

1. https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/blogs/emerging-evidence-on-covid-19s-impact-on-mental-health-and-health - mental health impacts of lockdown

2. https://ifs.org.uk/uploads/The-mental-health-effects-of-the-first-two-months-of-lockdown-and-social-distancing-during-the-Covid-19-pandemic-in-the-UK.pdf - mental health impacts of lockdown

3. https://apnews.com/article/covid-employer-mandates-us-29c2262c336bcfc38da2d14b251daf51 - Biden workplace vaccination mandate

4. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-393X/9/8/902/htm - self-determination theory

5. https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2021/vaccine-passports-may-lower-overall-number-people-uk-willing-get-vaccinated - vaccine passports do not increase number of ppl vaccinated

6. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/569957 - UK parliament petition against mandatory vaccination

7. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/13/police-in-england-using-covid-lockdown-rules-to-halt-any-protests - right to protest infringed upon during the pandemic

8. https://www.humanrightspulse.com/mastercontentblog/covid-19-and-religious-freedom-the-issue-with-closing-places-of-worship - Scotland court case

9. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-56511585 - Scottish churches reopen

10. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.11.10.21266188v1.full-text - study on VPVM

11. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/austria-plans-compulsory-covid-vaccination-for-all - Austria national vaccine mandate from Feb 2022