So it seems the lockdown is working, slowly. Infection rates are gradually falling. But what’s the end game? We can’t stay on lockdown for ever.
It seems that Asia is leading the way with things like mobile tracking and sharing of health info via apps, but also with simple things like health screening in public places. In many countries you can’t enter a supermarket without having your temperature taken and yet even in Europe’s busiest airports they don’t see the need for this quick and easy way to check if somebody is ill. Why has this simple measure not caught on in the west? Perhaps they think it’s ineffective but more likely, I think, it’s because they are not sure where they stand on invading one’s right to privacy. Does the government have the right to force all shoppers to have their temperature checked, or if this unacceptably intrusive? It’s high time we cleared this up and, unfortunately for the more guarded amongst us, the correct answer is that we need to give governments increased freedom to check and monitor our health.
People are talking about how COVID will reshape the world, and this is it. From Singapore to Taipei, Asians are laughing at us cute Europeans, safeguarding our confidential temperatures whilst our grandparents are dying in droves. Many Asian countries have already taken the decision that public health is more important than individual privacy and it’s only a matter of time before Europe follows suit, but it will be too late. These highly developed Asian countries that responded instantly to COVID 19 with all the technology that they could throw at it are going to come out ahead and shape the future. Eventually, health services will remotely monitor people’s heart rates and blood pressure, on board computers will warn us when we’ve eaten too much, and doctors will know even before we’ve entered the hospital how much exercise we do and how much booze we drink. In 100 years people will think we were mad running around moaning about privacy when people were dying.
But whilst we must give up some elements of our privacy for the benefit of society, it must be done in the right way. Relinquishing personal information does NOT mean that we have to sacrifice freedom of speech, rule of law, and accountability of the government. These things are far more sacred than one’s heart rate or blood count, and this is another thing for which we can look eastwards for guidance. As the Economist argued from Seoul this week, South Koreans had no qualms with the latest invasions into their privacy because they were done transparently and did not threaten the people’s oversight of their government. They have elections coming up and the government, whilst realising that they had to take unprecedented measures, also remembered that they had to keep the voters happy or they would be booted out of office. Meanwhile in Europe, having recently won an election comfortably, BoJo announced the lockdown measures by recorded message without any opportunity for questions, whilst google is busy deciding for us what we should and should not be seeing on the internet.
Things are changing, fast, and we need to make sure that we make the right changes, like sharing health data, and avoid the wrong ones, like restricting what the media can tell us.
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