Our government, like the governments of most other countries, is being forced to make a difficult decision: kill the economy, or allow the number of coronavirus cases- and, possibly, deaths- to increase. Both of these decisions have their pros and cons, but in Armenia’s case, it’s clear that it will be impossible to stay in lockdown for a long time due to economic, political, organizational, and “mentality” reasons. It is impossible to keep people at home any longer.
On the other hand, convincing Armenians that they need to be socially responsible on their own and they need to adhere to hygienic norms is, in my opinion, also impossible.
What remains is enforcement, but there are serious issues with this, to say the least. The Healthcare and Labor Inspectorate needs to carry out this enforcement. It remains unclear, however, how this state body will enforce the rules. I cannot imagine how the small number of employees at this agency will be able to control the work of hundreds of restaurants, coffee shops, beauty salons, grocery stores, and production and non-production companies.
Fine, let’s say that one out of thousands of violations can be recorded. What will happen then? How will the business owner be punished and fined, and according to which legal norms? It is clear that it is impossible to carry this out with only the State of Emergency Command’s decision and one government agency.
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Holding out hope that citizens will take note of possible violations and inform the proper agencies is, I think, meaningless. The entire law enforcement system needs to work here. And since we can predict that this situation will last for the next few months, the National Assembly also most likely needs to make punishments clear.
It is difficult to convince people that, despite the fact that many restrictions have been lifted, the coronavirus has not subsided anywhere. Its backbone has also not been broken. Over the past few days in Armenia, more than 100 new cases are being confirmed daily, and the worst part of all is that people have gotten used to it. It was not difficult to predict that the number of cases will increase by the thousands in June considering this behavior. If this happens, hospital beds and medical treatment will only be made available to those in critical condition. The rest will be treated within their own homes, which means that we will have to trust people to have a sense of self-responsibility again. However, one can understand our level of self-responsibility just by going outside.
What remains is to call upon people to stay home unless it’s necessary to go out. But I understand that the majority of people will ignore that.
Aram Abrahamyan
