Introduction
The pandemic of coronavirus disease continues to affect the maintenance of essential services and different aspects of daily life in the United States. The country’s government reacts to this rapidly evolving situation by designing and implementing new measures to reduce social interaction and prevent the spread of disease. This essay reviews current decisions and propositions to make assumptions about the outbreak’s potential future impact on the country.
Domestic Policy
U.S. domestic policy involves a wide range of administrative decisions related to education, business, the use of financial and natural resources, and, of course, healthcare. Due to the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19, the United States has already implemented a series of significant domestic policy decisions to reduce the number of fatalities as much as possible. The chief goal of the country’s current domestic policies is to minimize dissatisfaction among citizens and create conditions for the gradual decrease in COVID-19 incidence and mortality rates. Particular decisions include giving more authority to the head of the Health and Human Services Department to allocate healthcare resources and producing recommendations to increase working and learning from home (Congressional Research Service, p. 2). These changes clearly reflect the country’s current domestic policy issues and can lead to a fundamental rethinking of priorities.
Despite the certain unpredictability of the new dangerous virus, it is highly likely that the authorities will have to continue changing domestic policy in order to sort out priorities in the most appropriate way. For instance, the situation with the outbreak has already encouraged the authorities to draw a clear line between essential and non-essential businesses. Tangible restrictions, including total temporary closures and new requirements regarding occupancy rates, have been placed on non-essential businesses in different states (International Council of Shopping Centers). Given that the situation continues to evolve, it is likely that it will finally lead to more substantial domestic policy decisions that would strengthen healthcare and vaccine development research. Theoretically, such decisions may include measures to encourage more students to choose healthcare careers and new principles to guide budget allocation.
Foreign Policy
Apart from decisions related to the country’s internal issues, the COVID-19 outbreak can deeply affect the United States’ foreign relations and measures to promote its international political goals. On the one hand, the United States has always been regarded as an economic giant and an influential power. On the other hand, the outbreak has uncovered the country’s profound vulnerabilities, such as the limited production capacity and the inability to meet citizens’ demand for healthcare supplies without international partnerships (Campbell and Doshi, p. 4). With that in mind, it is reasonable to suggest that the country will need to alter its foreign policy goals to maximize effective trade and mutual assistance.
In particular, the outbreak of the new virus might affect the United States’ foreign policy strategies in relation to China. At the moment, many experts are worried about the heightening of the U.S.-China rivalry as the result of the blame game between the two countries (Sardarizadeh and Robinson). However, it can be supposed that the ongoing epidemic will urge the United States to intensify its diplomacy efforts and take action to maintain at least superficial stability in its relationships with China. For instance, as of March 2020, China’s share of the U.S. market of antibiotics exceeded 90% (Campbell and Doshi, p. 4). Also, it is expected that the country will heavily rely on China to address the lack of protective devices and intensive care equipment (Campbell and Doshi, p. 4). This economic interdependence will probably encourage the country to overcome conflicts and maximize cooperation and joint assistance.
Civil Liberties
Civil liberties refer to guarantees and freedoms that governments promise to protect the population from injustice and unnecessary restrictions. Although everyone understands the importance of civil liberties, it is likely that the consequences of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States will continue to be used to justify decisions neglecting such freedoms. Temporary limitations on Americans’ civil liberties are already in place and take the form of business closures and banned gatherings and public events, including religious meetings (The Editorial Board). At the moment, the majority of people in the United States take such restrictions as a forced necessity that can prevent further exacerbations of the epidemiological situation (The Editorial Board). Since there are no radical epidemiological improvements at the moment, these limitations on civil liberties can be expected to continue.
Basically, the situation with civil liberties will be similar to the spread of the virus in terms of unpredictability. In case of the growth of COVID-19 prevalence, the United States will probably place more severe restrictions affecting civil liberties to reduce the spread of both the virus and panic. It is rather difficult to make accurate predictions regarding such situations, but tangible threats to the freedom of the news media should not be regarded as an unrealistic option. Regulations to prevent the circulation of fake news are an essential protective measure in many countries, including the United States (The Editorial Board). At the same time, the authorities’ opportunity to exploit them to suppress any unwanted activities of the mass media and conceal all mistakes of the government should also be considered.
Civil Rights
Aside from civil liberties, the ongoing epidemic can have negative effects on the situation with common Americans’ civil rights or essential protections that should be guaranteed. To start with, further growth of COVID-19 incidence will be likely to encourage the law enforcement authorities to seek new powers that would be exercised at the expense of common people’s civil rights (The Editorial Board). Regarding the prerequisites to it, the United States Attorney William Barr has recently proposed expanding the emergency powers of law enforcement agencies to facilitate the use of indefinite detention (The Editorial Board). Although such propositions often get criticized by the public, many fear that the ongoing crisis will be used to justify the need for such changes (The Editorial Board). In this case, the government will place significant restrictions on American citizens’ rights to a fair trial and government services.
Another way of how the coronavirus outbreak may affect the situation with civil rights refers to people’s access to non-life-saving medical procedures. Politicians in eight U.S. states have already used the current outbreak as the main reason to further restrict access to safe abortions (Glenda). Although being able to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is not regarded as a constitutional right, the case with increased abortion bans can probably be followed by further restrictions related to other kinds of surgical operations (Glenda). For instance, in the worst-case scenario, people might be denied access to different types of elective surgeries, which would involve limiting their right to use public facilities.
Conclusion
Based on the current state of things, it is reasonable to anticipate further domestic policy decisions to give the pride of place to essential services. Regarding foreign policy, the continuous U.S.-China conflict related to the origins of the virus is highly unpredictable, but economic considerations might encourage the United States to find the path towards ameliorating these relationships. Finally, the outbreak might threaten people’s civil rights and liberties by affecting their access to medical services and fair trials.
References
Campbell, Kurt M., and Rush Doshi. “The Coronavirus Could Reshape Global Order.” Foreign Affairs, 2020, pp. 1-5.
Congressional Research Service. “Domestic Public Health Response to COVID-19: Current Status.” CRS Reports, 2020.
Glenda, Jessica. “States Use Coronavirus to Ban Abortions, Leaving Women Desperate: ‘You Can’t Pause a Pregnancy’.” The Guardian, 2020.
International Council of Shopping Centers. “COVID-19 Updates for the U.S. Retail and Real Estate Industry.” ICSC.
Sardarizadeh, Shayan, and Olga Robinson. “Coronavirus: the US and China Trade Conspiracy Theories.” BBC News, 2020.
The Editorial Board. “We, the People, in Order to Defeat the Coronavirus.” The New York Times, 2020. Web.