Opinion On COVID-19 Situation In Country: It's Really Bad

Even the regime has to admit it.

The Letters to Daughter telegram channel writes about the oddities of dealing with the coronavirus in Belarus.

- It's a funny thing, since Saturday the country has proclaimed a declaration on a universal mask regime. And one can imagine the effort it took to make that happen. For, after everything that has happened, the declaration of a mask regime is almost an admission of one's own wrongdoing. And the Belarusan authorities are definitely not good at admitting their mistakes. And if they have to admit them, it means that everything is really bad.

That is not to say that their remorse has reached such a depth so as to take care seriously about the safety of the population under their subordination. You know, to limit entertainment, to introduce distance learning, or, say, to add credibility to the vaccination campaign. Well, at least they have declared a declaration on a universal mask regime. And even allowed the Health Ministry to raise the daily limits of officially sick people.

The point is, I didn't really want to tell you how bad it is. Far be it from me to tell you that. You know how bad it is better than I do.

The main credit for the fact that our country survived the first wave of the epidemic relatively smoothly belongs to civil society. The citizens who were concerned (in a good sense of the word) united to help the doctors, were collecting money and buying things, on which the state decided to save money.

And then there was public opinion in the country. And while the authorities at their highest level were practicing their wit, the society decided for itself that the epidemic is a bad thing. And, thanks to the established public consensus, most people, willingly and in spite of state coercion, took all the safety measures that the state did not take. Restaurants emptied out, shopping malls became deserted, and almost all the people did not mind wearing masks. Even distance learning started to appear in some places, though the Ministry of Education tried very hard not to allow such a mess to happen.

However, there is not much left of civil society in the country in recent months. And the one that is left prefers to keep a low profile so as not to be noticed.

Expressing one's opinion is at best fraught with administrative responsibility. Citizens' associations amount to an article on extremism with particularly aggravating circumstances. Public organizations, recognized as legitimate by the authorities, are a poor substitute for civil society. For any activity not covered by the television news does not make any practical sense for legitimate activists.

Here, it turns out that the current situation with the epidemic demonstrates the value, meaning, and importance of civil society and public opinion for the normal functioning of the country.

Because civil society is not only about the change of power. It is also about the ability of citizens to take care of one another.

And the difference between the country in which civil society is present and that in which it is declared illegal can already be estimated in concrete figures.

Even according to the official version of the Ministry of Health, the current situation turns out to be about 50 percent worse than it was last spring. But unfortunately, society is paying a very high price to feel the difference between the presence and absence of civil society.