After a medical academic was arrested following mass protests and social upheaval against the Safepass, I feel the need to call for cooler and more compassionate heads to prevail.
The Safepass is the state’s answer to the EU’s Green Passport and, from the beginning, sent the damaging message that we now have a two-class society: the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. It is also mismanaged.
The state could have introduced an organised system to process vaccine lot numbers and rapid test reference numbers. Approvals could then be sent through an SMS system. If challenged by the relevant authorities, the user could show a QR code confirming they’d taken precautions before going out to socialise or to places where there are people gathered en masse.
This way, the approval process would remain with the qualified authorities, just as it did during the lockdowns. Rapid tests are not difficult to do for those who are not vaccinated, the system already exists as all rapid tests are entered into a central database.
Confused policy
This is not how it went, however. The Health Ministry’s policy went even further astray after confusing instructions were sent to venues allowing them more customers if they only accept fully-vaccinated customers.
On top of that, there was a haphazard attempt to place the responsibility for checking the Safepass on entirely unqualified hospitality or retail workers. In essence, the state passed the buck when it shifted the authority to approve Safepasses over to random workers in supermarkets, bars and restaurants.
I remember an authoritative demand to see my Safepass at a coffeeshop that will go un-named. The feisty cashier reminded me of an officious border controller, down the irritated glare over his mask, complete with attitude and outstretched fingers awaiting my vaccine card. Like the border controllers, he barely looked at the card. After all, the thrill is in demanding to see the papers, no?
Even if he had looked carefully at the card, he was in no position to really understand it, not being a medical professional himself.
This opens up another chapter - the right to privacy of one’s medical records. Every coffeeshop worker can now breach those rights at any time and I disagree with the Data Protection Commissioner Irene Loizidou that this is OK. The commissioner’s point that the pandemic has created additional responsibilities for unqualified people to check your medical records can be easily challenged by any human rights lawyer worth his or her salt. Indeed, it is entirely possible that those places which check Safepasses may end up in court.
COVID social experiments
There is another more insidious thing happening here, the abuse of authority.
The COVID experiments with society reminds me of Dr. Zimbardo’s 1971 Stanford University experiment on the psychology of abuse of power and authority. In this experiment, the scientists recruited students and assigned them the role of either prisoner or guard on the basis of a coin toss. The ‘guards’, untrained and inexperienced, moved quickly towards abusing the ‘prisoners’.
The prison experiment at Stanford built on the work by Yale University professor Stanley Milgram’s. He studied how willing people were to inflict electric shocks on other people when ordered to do so by an ‘authority’.
Milgram’s research showed that people will comply quickly with an order from authority, no matter how irrational and even if it means causing pain to their fellow human beings.
My impression of experiencing social experiments was reinforced after Harvard-trained virologist Dr. Elpidoforos Soteriades was arrested in Nicosia for inciting violence on July 18th. The authorities say his speech to peaceful protesters incited the damage to a private TV station which was ransacked by looters later that night.
I listened to his speech, which was in Greek. (Link opens to Dr. Soteriades’ lawyer’s Facebook upload.)
Bio-ethics
At no time did the professor call for violence of any type or target the TV station. On the contrary, he made strong bio-ethics arguments against mandatory vaccines and called for the state to provide antibody treatments to those who cannot have the COVID vaccine or to those who are fearful of a vaccine which arrived so recently in the real world and is still under emergency authorisation.
He made a strong point that making the COVID vaccine mandatory goes against the Helsinki Accords which require full and informed permission from human subjects during medical testing.
The professor further made the point that people are on the point of losing their livelihoods or have already lost their livelihoods and that the state has to answer for this. I can attest to that, after all, as an artist my work depends on the public’s patronage and financial hardships are no longer on the horizon but very much in front of me and many other artists I know.
But the real point is that Dr. Soteriades questioned authority and was arrested for his independent thinking just because it is different to current government policy. The professor’s speech was in front of a sea of peaceful protesters who listened carefully to his points. Hardly the behaviour of the real perpetrators of the attack on the TV station - the thugs and looters who were arrested on the basis of CCTV footage.
The fact that the professor was arrested for exercising his freedom of expression is more dangerous ground leading to censorship, self-censorship and the steady erosion of our civil rights.
Dr. Soteriades is no pundit, he is a scholar of the enemy we all face - a pandemic virus. He has steadfastly criticised the government’s strategy and was well within his rights to do so. It is strange how he ends up under arrest for expressing his expert opinion instead of being consulted for better ways to handle the disease.
The COVID pandemic has taken many things from us - loved ones, our hopes for the future, financial stability and social cohesion. Will it now take away our freedom of expression, our dignity and the vital ability to find the middle ground?
The only way to prevent further social breakdowns is to find our balance and for cooler heads to prevail.
