Hope Decree: a great authoritarian mess

The decree issued by the Minister of Health on Sunday afternoon is, in truth, a BAD law, written in a superficial, hasty and demagogic way. This is because on the one hand it imposes a categorical order on a category of activities that will seem superfluous, but are still legitimate, on the other hand because it introduces a criterion of subjectivity in the application of a decree so broad as to make its application completely arbitrary. Why close the discos and not, for example, close the beaches? When there is "Too many people", what is the limit number? Is a hundred people dancing outdoors too many? 50 are still dangerous? 25? or 6? So why not close the barracks?

In France, for example, the government is evaluating different measures, namely the use of masks in the workplace.

However, the standard is really badly written. Let's consider the content:

a) it is mandatory from 18.00 to 06.00 throughout the national territory to use respiratory protection also outdoors, in the spaces pertaining to places and premises open to the public as well as in public spaces (squares, open spaces, streets) or if due to the physical characteristics it is easier to form gatherings, even of a spontaneous and / or occasional nature ;

b) activities that take place in dance halls, discos and similar venues, outdoors or indoors, are suspended.

How can you, in advance, know the places where it is easier for gatherings to form, even of a spontaneous and / or occasional nature ? How will the citizen who should wear a mask in those places know in advance? Will the municipalities install the appropriate signage? Or the task of making this assessment will be left to municipal police and law enforcement agents, leaving however an enormous degree of arbitrariness and evaluation difficulty to those who must apply the rule itself. Why not give a more precise spatial evaluation, or a reference?

Furthermore, the law also opens the way to more politically thought-out and problematic prohibitions: if discos have been closed as meeting places, will we see political rallies banned tomorrow? Will we completely leave our freedom at the mercy of a power that, with hundreds of positive migrants, helps create an emergency and then uses it as an excuse to restrict personal and political freedoms? Also because the data relating, for example, to Spain, where the infections are much more numerous, indicate a somewhat more complex reality than the simple "So many infections, so many deaths"

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The article Hope Decree: a great authoritarian mess comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/decreto-speranza-un-gran-pasticcio-autoritario/ on Mon, 17 Aug 2020 07:00:21 +0000.