Public health, referring to the health of entire populations, has been a hot topic in recent years. Until now, the focus of public health has been to help the population live to a standard. But when a pandemic emerges, public health becomes a crisis. When this happens, those in control of public health are allowed to take measures fit for a crisis, establishing a state controlled by public health. With the indefinite nature of health, this state justifies perpetually paranoid measures to control the population.
First, let me dissect a public health crisis, most commonly a pandemic. A pandemic is when there is a virus versus the population. With such a broad, although accurate, outline, the population is required by those in control of public health to unify so as to combat the virus like a team. This unity is always homogeneous, where everyone is required to obey the commands of those in power rather than make their own decisions. Moreover, large swaths of the population don’t feel the burden of the requirement, rather they feel as if they are working towards the “greater good.”
The division between virus and population becomes blurred after the virus has had time to interact with the population. This creates the new outline of infected versus uninfected. Again, the indefinite nature of health broadens this outline to potential infection versus potential uninfection. So, everyone has the potential to spread or contract the virus. Expanding this idea, if everyone has the potential to spread or contract the virus, then everyone is a threat to everyone. This isolates people, and makes the presence of another person a threat to you, and you, a threat to them. With society and the individual under a constant potential threat, the public health state is able to oppress individual choice indirectly through incentives (i.e. obey or starve) and perpetuate the crisis indefinitely as everyone always has the potential to spread or contract the virus. For the latter reason, the pandemic will not end anytime soon.
Now, in our globalized world, pandemics are not confined to one population but eventually invade all populations. As each society centralizes to fight the pandemic as a team, the leaders of each society centralize to establish a global health state to control the health of the world population. The idea of potentials and its effects are applicable to all persons during a global pandemic.
The indefinite nature of a global public health crisis enables those in power to establish a centralized group able to subdue individual choice for the “greater good” of public health. In the political sphere, having the group’s wellbeing over the individual’s is known as collectivism. This is unnerving as collectivism is a strong precondition for oppressive political regimes because of the centralization of power. Is the current public health crisis more than what is being told?