Instruction: Write an essay about whether corona policy measures are beneficial towards society or not


Response: After nearly two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and yet another lockdown, many people around the Netherlands are growing restless and fed up with the restrictions. According to the Rijksoverheid, a record-breaking 74,000 cases were confirmed in the Netherlands on January 28th, with just ten corona-related ICU admissions or deaths (“Infections- Confirmed Cases”, 2022). This raises the debate: should the government continue enforcing these measures or not? In order to formulate an answer, one must first understand the virus and how it spreads, and then consider the debate from political, ethical, social and economic perspectives.
The first reported case of SARS-CoV-2, which causes the COVID-19 disease, was on December 31, 2019 ("Coronavirus disease", 2022), and it set off a chain reaction of political instability worldwide. What first started as an epidemic within China had reached almost every country in the world within months. In the last 20 years, many countries have been affected by viruses related to Covid-19 such as SARS. Because of previous experience, they took appropriate measures immediately. For example, China has had no more than 110,000 cases since the start of the pandemic, even though it has almost a population of 1.5 billion (Worldometer, 2022). However, a less politically stable country, such as Turkey, was less prepared and suffered from 12 million cases, even though it has a population of 85 million. The virus spreads very quickly because of its airborne transmission mechanism. If one is near an infected person, the carrier’s exhalation may carry the virus and can be inhaled by healthy individuals. Putting on a mask and keeping distance help prevent infected individuals from spreading virus particles into the vicinity of healthy people. However, in countries where measures were not enforced, there was a large increase in excessive deaths. The new omicron variant is proving to spread at least 20 times faster than the original strain because of its 30 mutations (Grossman and Stahel, 2022). Fortunately, it is also far less deadly because it does not attack lung tissue in its earlier stages (Zimmer and Ghorayshi, 2021).
One can also analyze coronavirus restrictions from an ethical perspective: should we  lower corona measures even though doing so may put more lives at risk? As of January 28th 2021, the coronavirus has a death rate of 0.51%. This is relatively high compared to other respiratory viruses such as influenza, which has a mortality rate of 0.01%. COVID-19 disproportionally affects vulnerable groups, such as those with underlying health conditions such as diabetes, obesity, or autoimmune diseases. This is especially true in the elderly, because of the increased amount of health conditions as well as an immune system deteriorated by age. The coronavirus infects the upper respiratory tract, including the lungs. It breaks into cells and orders them to create copies of the virus. The cell then bursts open and sends new copies of the virus toward other cells. Eventually, if there is not an effective immune response, the patient will perish due to lung damage, especially with the strains of COVID-19 prior to the Omicron variant. During a lockdown, there is minimal human contact, which slows down the spread of the virus. However, preventing social contact has its own devastating effects. For example, during the lockdown there were over 2.5 million children at risk of falling behind on learning (“Jongeren” 2021') ("Education and COVID-19", 2022). Furthermore, according to OSF Healthcare, “Average weekly visits to the emergency department for suspected suicide attempts among young girls were up more than 50% from the same period a year ago” (OSF Health Care, 2021). Thus, even though more lives are put at stake, by taking extra measures for those in the risk group, one can safely reopen society and prevent suicides and learning disbilities in the youth. Moreover, vaccines can prevent major damage to tissues from happening in the first place.
From a societal perspective, coronavirus has proven to be a “splinter issue”, pushing some people into vaccine denial. Many citizens are refraining from getting vaccines without truly understanding the consequences. There are two types of vaccines: mRNA and viral vector. The mRNA COVID-19 vaccine was the first mRNA vaccine to be used in the general public. mRNA vaccines have RNA inside lipids which help the RNA enter the cell. Ribosomes read the RNA and instruct the cells to make the same spike proteins as SARS-CoV-2. The body then recognizes that the Corona spike proteins are invaders and creates antibodies to destroy them. In comparison, viral vector vaccines insert a harmless copy of the virus with the same spike protein DNA, causing the immune system to attack it and remember it. For both types of vaccines, memory B cells will continue to create antibodies in case the person gets exposed to the real virus in the future. According to Dr. Stahel, “Omicron has mutated so much that it has less affinity in terms of the antibodies from the vaccine recognizing it, so, therefore, the answer is the booster shot, because you will overwhelm the virus with the quantity of the immune response even if there is not a perfect match” (Grossman and Stahel, 2022). Thus, the original vaccine doses and, more recently, the booster shot play an important role in preventing infections, but more importantly in reducing the chance of severe illness and death. However, new studies have shown that effective immunity can wear off within six months, making it necessary to get annual doses, similar to influenza (Doucleff). 13.6% of the population over 18 refuses to get vaccinated, primarily because of distrust in the government (“Vaccinations COVID-19 vaccinations”, 2022). This limits the effects of herd immunity, a concept in which if enough people are vaccinated the virus will no longer be able to spread due to all the targets being immune.
Finally, one must consider the economic implications of a lockdown. The lockdown caused colossal unemployment, particularly for those who worked in the travel industry. For example, according to the world economic forum, 114 million people lost their jobs during 2020 (Richter, 2021). Furthermore, the lockdowns across the world also caused an estimated 3.2 trillion euro loss in labor income. Even with the devastating economic effects, one must consider the fact that lives are put at stake when appropriate corona measures are not taken. According to NPR, there would have been approximately 488 times the number of cases in China if insufficient measures were taken, hence saving millions of lives (Beaubien, 2020). 
	In conclusion, by considering COVID-19 from a political, ethical, social and economic lens, I conclude that even though the virus is highly contagious and fatal towards certain groups, lockdowns are only temporary solutions. A lockdown is only beneficial to our society once excessive mortality starts rising. Hence, by taking measures early on, countries can limit the spread of the virus. For example, it took six months before mask-wearing was seen as a viable measure. As seen in the first lockdown, tens of thousands of people lost their jobs and over 2.5 million children had to do remote learning in the Netherlands ("Jongeren", 2021). Thus, by taking measures on time and being prepared, one need not go into lockdown. However, if the deaths start to become excessive, it is worth enforcing a proportional amount of corona measures.