5
OPINION

Thursday, May 28, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
5
OPINION

A

s COVID-19 continues to run its 
course across the United States, 
there are few aspects of Ameri-
can life that have avoided this pandemic’s 
disastrous impact. 
According to medical data compiled by 
Johns Hopkins University, over 100,000 
Americans have succumbed to COVID-19. 
At the same time, the Institute for Health 
Metrics and Evaluation at the University of 
Washington projects that our nation will 
see over 130,000 deaths by early August 
as states begin to relax social distancing 
measures.
While the deaths from COVID-19 con-
tinue to mount, the economic carnage 
from shutdowns aimed at stopping the 
spread of COVID-19 is unprecedented in 
modern American history. According to 
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national 
unemployment rate has skyrocketed to 
nearly 15 percent, with the economy slash-
ing over 20 million jobs in April alone. 
Meanwhile, J.P. Morgan Chief Invest-
ment Officer Bob Michele predicted that 
our economy may not reach the levels of 
employment we enjoyed before the pan-
demic for 10-12 years.
But as thousands of Americans lose 
their lives to COVID-19 — and millions 
more forfeit their livelihoods — another, 
more subtle level of loss is rippling across 
the nation. It’s become clear that as this 
global pandemic continues to threaten 
people’s lives and our economy, our essen-
tial and celebrated freedoms as Americans 
are coming under increasing fire. 
Since governors across the nation have 
imposed stay-at-home orders in an effort 
to “flatten the curve,” our country has wit-
nessed a slew of disturbing civil liberties 
violations that seemed unthinkable before 
COVID-19 turned life upside down. While 
it’s perfectly reasonable — and necessary 
— to expect changes to our daily lives in 
trying times like these, it seems that people 
across the nation have forgotten that our 
freedoms are never put on hold, even in the 
midst of crises. It’s clear our government 
has gone too far.
While COVID-19 continues to undoubt-
edly be a formidable threat, leaders have 
gone to unacceptable, sickening lengths 
to enforce government-mandated social 
distancing, threatening arrests and even 
jail time for violating stay-at-home orders. 
(Meanwhile, the stay-at-home orders 
themselves have come under scrutiny as 
Americans question how constitutional 
they really are.) In Dallas, Texas, a judge 
sent Shelley Luther, a salon owner, to jail 
for reopening her business and defying 
the stay-at-home order; Luther was called 
“selfish” in court even as she argued that 
she had no choice, saying her children 
were going hungry. After shock across the 
state, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott prohibited 
jail time for those who violate social dis-
tancing, freeing Luther.

Similar scenes are playing out across 
the country. In Philadelphia, PA., police 
violently removed a man from a bus for 
not wearing a face covering. Others have 
been fined or arrested for simply ventur-
ing outside for a walk or exercise. While 
this excessive, dangerous enforcement 
of social distancing is threatening for all 
Americans, the New York Times reports 
that people of color are being dispropor-
tionately arrested in particular. 
Beyond these incidents, it’s clear that 
our freedoms have been violated in count-
less other ways as well. For instance, 
Americans have been barred from visiting 
places of worship like churches and syna-
gogues to exercise their freedom of reli-
gion, which meant that, for example, most 
Christians couldn’t go to church on Easter, 
their holiest day of the year. Meanwhile, in 
our criminal justice system, although the 
Constitution gives the accused the right 
to a speedy trial, a number of defendants 
have been forced to sit longer in jail as 
trial dates are pushed back. According to a 
recent article in the Lansing State Journal, 
“For defendants who are not in custody, 
the delay likely is an inconvenience. But for 
those in the county jail, the shutdown is an 
extra month — or more — that they have to 
wait for justice.” Moreover, governments 
across the country now openly discuss 
implementing advanced contact tracing 
and surveillance programs to help curb 
COVID-19, even though these programs 
would clearly infringe on our freedoms 
and privacy rights.
In addition to these civil liberties vio-
lations, the rhetoric of politicians and 
leaders across the country is downright 
disturbing. In New York City, Mayor Bill 
de Blasio suggested that New Yorkers 
turn in those that are breaking social-
distancing rules to the city, a move that 
some Americans quickly denounced as 
“communist.” In Chicago, Mayor Lori 
Lightfoot told residents that they would 
be treated like criminals if they didn’t 
follow social distancing regulations, say-
ing, “We will shut you down, we will 
cite you, and if we have to, we will arrest 
you.” Lightfoot continued, “Don’t make 
us treat you like a criminal, but if you act 
like a criminal and you violate the law and 
refuse to do what’s necessary to save lives 
in the middle of a pandemic, we will take 
you to jail. Period.” It is understandable 
that New York and Chicago — along with 
a number of other hard-hit cities — are 
continuously grappling with how to deal 
with COVID-19, but there is a way to curb 
the spread of COVID-19 without such bla-
tant disregard for our precious freedoms 
that we all celebrate as Americans.

Don’t let COVID tread on our freedoms

EVAN STERN | COLUMNIST

Evan Stern can be reached at 

erstern@umich.edu.

ZACK BLUMBERG | OP-ED

F

rom the end of World War 
II through the present day, 
the United States has main-
tained a position as the world’s pre-
mier superpower. For decades, the 
American values of hard work, indi-
vidualism, liberalism and free-mar-
ket capitalism appeared to lead to 
massive successes, including tech-
nological advancement, economic 
prosperity and high standards of 
living. However, as COVID-19 has 
exposed, the values which people 
once associated with America’s 
brand of strength and prosperity 
now appear antiquated and out-
dated and are ultimately holding the 
U.S. back. While countries around 
the world have responded to the 
virus in different ways, American 
society’s fundamental focus on indi-
vidualism, freedom and economic 
growth have exposed the inequal-
ity, distrust of government institu-
tions and lack of protections for 
vulnerable populations within our 
country. 
First and foremost, the spread of 
COVID-19 has highlighted Ameri-
ca’s extreme inequality, something 
which is largely a product of Ameri-
can society’s fanatical devotion to 
economic growth. As economist 
Milton Friedman declared in a 
1970 New York Times Magazine 
article, “The Social Responsibility 
of Business is to Increase its Prof-
its.” In the decades since Friedman’s 
article was published, it’s clear that 
America has taken his advice to 
heart. Today, the U.S. has 10 of the 
world’s 20 most profitable compa-
nies, but at a cost: It also ranks 39th 
worst in income inequality, worse 
than countries such as Angola, the 
Democratic Republic of the Congo 
and Turkmenistan. Last year, a 
study found that nearly 60 percent 
of Americans had less than $1,000 
in their bank accounts, another 
sign of America’s staggering income 
inequality. 
Unsurprisingly, America’s focus 
on profits, and its acceptance of the 
inequalities that philosophy inher-
ently produces, has greatly con-
tributed to the nation’s disastrous 
response to COVID-19. On April 21, 
a day on which over 2,600 Ameri-
cans died of the virus, Texas Lt. 
Gov. Dan Patrick said that “there 
are more important things than liv-
ing and that’s saving this country.” 
Similarly, former New Jersey Gov. 
Chris Christie commented, “there 
are going to be deaths no matter 
what,” but “we have to stand up for 
the American way of life.” In saying 
this, Christie clearly implied that 

the American way of life is primar-
ily focused on economic growth 
— inequality and public health be 
damned. When faced with skyrock-
eting unemployment rates, the U.S. 
Congress was both unwilling and 
unable to come up with an econom-
ic solution that addressed America’s 
income inequality. Although the 
federal government ultimately sent 
out a one-time $1,200 stimulus 
check to citizens, by April 23, only 
10 days after the first checks were 
deposited, 84 percent of Americans 
said they already needed another 
check to make ends meet. That fed-
eral relief bill, which cost over $2 
trillion in total, simply proved how 
unassailable American inequality 
has become. 
The COVID-19 pandemic has 
also revealed the problems with the 
American society’s support of free-
market capitalism, as workers often 
find themselves under-protected 
and devoid of rights. Although there 
has consistently been some opposi-
tion to America’s overly laissez-faire 
attitude — such as Upton Sinclar’s 
1906 novel “The Jungle” — support 
for deregulation and limited gov-
ernment oversight of the private 
sector is a major component of both 
America’s society and economy. 
As of 2015, American employees 
worked an average of 1,779 hours per 
year, the seventh most of any nation 
globally. Additionally, American 
workers often have far less nego-
tiating power with their employ-
ers than their global counterparts: 
only 10.6 percent of Americans are 
part of labor unions, far lower than 
countries of comparable wealth and 
development such as the U.K. (24.7 
percent), Canada (26.5 percent) and 
Germany (17.7 percent). 
COVID-19 has exposed the fun-
damental flaws of this anti-regula-
tory attitude, showing the danger 
of limiting workers’ rights in favor 
of supporting businesses. A quar-
ter of U.S. workers have no paid 
sick leave, meaning many essen-
tial workers face a difficult choice: 
do they go into work and risk get-
ting themselves or others sick, or 
do they stay home and risk getting 
fired, losing essential benefits such 
as healthcare? Even when workers 
have attempted to demand better 
treatment in response to the virus, 
the power imbalance between them 
and their employers makes this an 
impossible battle: On March 30, 
Amazon fired an employee who had 
planned to lead a strike demand-
ing 
safer 
working 
conditions. 
Ultimately, America’s support for 

businesses has hamstrung work-
ers’ ability to receive the protections 
they deserve, leading to preventable 
deaths.
American society’s individualism 
and distrust of government institu-
tions have worsened the COVID-
19 crisis, creating an atmosphere 
in which necessary measures are 
seen by some as totalitarian attacks 
on freedom and liberty. Across the 
country, protestors have come out 
to defend their self-proclaimed 
rights to things such as haircuts, 
believing that the government’s 
stay-at-home orders infringe upon 
their personal liberties. While other 
countries’ citizens appear to under-
stand the importance of deferring to 
public health experts in the name 
of safety, the American ethos of 
individualism appears to include 
defending one’s right to contracting 
the virus. More broadly, this rep-
resents American society’s funda-
mental distrust of government: At 
a time when trusting institutions is 
essential for a cohesive response to 
a deadly virus, some Americans are 
unwilling to put aside their personal 
biases for the communal well-being.
This focus on individual liber-
ties above all else is also apparent in 
the federal government’s response 
to the pandemic. In comparison 
to America’s constant concerns 
about creating too extensive a wel-
fare system, which has limited the 
federal government’s willingness 
to intervene, other countries have 
taken much more comprehensive 
responses: Canada’s plan includes 
C$2,000 stimulus checks for four 
months, while Denmark’s govern-
ment “agreed to cover the cost of 
employees’ salaries at private com-
panies as long as those companies 
do not fire people,” effectively freez-
ing the Danish economy until after 
the worst of the virus has passed. 
In conclusion, COVID-19 has 
exposed a bevy of problems with 
the once-fabled American value sys-
tem, showing the downsides to the 
tenets which had previously been 
associated with creating the world’s 
wealthiest nation. Today, those same 
values of free-market economics 
and individual rights are responsible 
for America’s inhumane response 
to the pandemic and have laid bare 
the deep-rooted inequalities, weak 
worker protections and unwilling-
ness to sacrifice for the greater good. 

How COVID-19 exposed America’s failing values

Zack Blumberg is a junior in 

the College of Literature, Science 

& the Arts and can be reached at 

zblumber@umich.edu.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

