We should NOT accept COVID-19 responses as a "NEW NORMAL," because there is no scientific justification for such permanent changes. While many may wear masks and gloves way into the future, policies based on the limited understanding of COVID-19 and "emergency" responses to handling the virus should be avoided, because we may never regain rights yielded under "emergency" conditions.
Already, different segments of society are using the COVID-19 virus as a wedge for eroding consumer rights to privacy, to work, to associate, or even to have authority over our own bodies and medical records. There is also the emerging risk of "off-label," unintended consequences, of allowing any emergency measures to become the "new normal."
What is absolutely critical for consumers is that we understand that every emergency action taken in response to COVID-19 be deemed temporary and that it be limited in scope with protections and consequences in the event such emergency powers are used and/or abused in any way by either government or private entities.
Start with drones. As reported in "GT," on 4/22/2020 by Jed Pressgrove in, "Drones Become Part of Local U.S. Responses to COVID-19," "A number of U.S. police departments have utilized drones as part of their efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19, though public safety agencies differ in the way they employ the emerging technology."
Not only are the drones employed "differently," under law enforcement's public safety powers, but consumers are given only the "assurance" that the data collected is or isn't being used by government in specific other unlawful ways. What we don't know is: The public safety power being utilized in response to COVID-19 ends when? After the peak, at a certain time definite, or is this a PERMANENT new tool that will be used by law enforcement?
There are also non-law enforcement individuals invading their fellow citizens' privacy rights using drones. For example, rogue drone operators are currently comfortable going on the news to show how they're photographing people and telling them to disperse because they're in violation of social distancing rules without any official authority and notably without any enforced prohibition against such conduct.
Mayor De Blasio of NY actually took to the airwaves telling citizens to take pictures and report any groups not following social distancing. Fearful individuals or those with a penchant for vigilante conduct or voyeurism now have an "in" to invading their neighbors' privacy. This should have been smacked down immediately as unlawful and should NEVER be a NEW NORMAL.
Cell site location information, CSLI, is being employed by states trying to "track" COVID-19, individuals gathering and/or tracking who someone deemed "infected" had contact with. Right now, whether it's claims that such data is anonymized or claims that the data is used ONLY for a certain purpose, scared individuals seem willing to expand government authority to monitor our movements via our cell phones, or worse, let entities like Facebook do the tracking and share that information with government.
In Carpenter v. US, 2017, the Supreme Court addressed whether a search warrant was required BEFORE tracking someone's movements via cell phone. In this instance an individual was convicted of crimes based on law enforcement tracking him via cell phone. You can read the opinion, but the good news was that the Court slightly reined in law enforcement's use of the tracking tools, CSLI, identifying them as a "search" requiring a warrant, though leaving no doubt that in most cases law enforcement could obtain search warrants in addition to already existing and legal warrantless searches established.
CSLI presents a giant risk to the already eroded rights against search and seizure and COVID-19 should NOT be tolerated as a back door to further erode those rights as a NEW NORMAL.
Then there's right to privacy of our medical health with shared information, forced testing before being allowed to return to work in the face of unreliable testing, contact "tracing." Again, FEAR, should not dictate policy. There are reasons for protecting your medical information, and just like cases where stigma or fear results in unlawful and unjustified discrimination, protection from the ADA, or other such federal law must go hand in hand with any policy that demands us sharing our medical information.
Lockdowns can NOT become permanent NEW NORMALS for COVID-19 or any new virus. In addition to the questionable authority for such long-term state actions (expect to see court cases), the practicality of waiting for either reliable testing, reliable treatment, reliable vaccine means such lockdowns could last for years.
Further, lockdowns are currently unevenly mandated and enforced, meaning that while lockdowns are working now, because people are scared, in the future people might realize that we're not all in it together since public employees are still collecting benefits and paychecks while many others are being furloughed or laid off. NY's Governor Cuomo and his successors might be less convincing in their call for volunteers when he and his public employee coworkers are still collecting paychecks showing it really is not an "in it together" scenario.
The NEW NORMAL cannot be the passage of various emergency measures as a means of bypassing lawmaking. For instance, once restaurants open, should we continue to rely on the vigilante photographers in terms of social distancing or cleanliness? Probably not. Health inspectors would have to be given new criteria for assessing establishment cleanliness. New occupancy numbers would have to be issued for restaurants to establish safe social distancing as places that could hold 250 might only be permitted to serve half or a third of the people they did before. This could make the difference between survival and death of businesses and must be done by law.
We must also beware the NEW NORMAL of "protecting" financial interests of individuals affected by COVID-19 while avoiding INCENTIVIZING claims of COVID-19. Should hospitals create permanent additional space for "outbreaks," based on this outbreak? Likely not, because paying for that space will be carried by every taxpayer and hospital patient and will raise hospital bills even higher. Right now we know that current statistics are NOT accurate, so such hospital expansion and its expense would be as inappropriate as it would be to keep a banquet hall on retainer in case you have a party.
Even the death counts are not reliable. The CDC currently has the provision that "In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID–19 on a death certificate as 'probable' or 'presumed.'" This maybe-maybe not death certificate information promises to skew statistics for years and years to come.
When it comes to special COVID-19 funding, whether it's employees using extended family leave or providers using special COVID-19 provisions for funding, or even for information gathering, it is crucial that these provisions be temporary, because there is not enough known about COVID-19.
Already, without reliable testing and therefore without reliable diagnosis, medical coding has addressed COVID-19 in terms of provider billing and reimbursement (https://revcycleintelligence.com/news/what-providers-need-to-know-about-covid-19-coding-and-billing) opening up a new area of patient testing that could very well become part of the "covered" preventive testing we currently have that has had the unintended consequence of becoming a tool for defensive medicine and often ranges in results from an inconvenience, to an increased cost, to a barrier to care and even a risk to patients exposed to additional tests as a matter of course merely because they're "covered" by health insurers, though we know or should know such testing is often used to raise premiums.
It is premature to call anything a NEW NORMAL in terms of responses to COVID-19. We've received a flood of different, conflicting and evolving information and though social distancing seems to be and logically works if something is contagious, permanent lockdowns are not feasible.
When it comes to basic rights of privacy, association, protection against unlawful search and seizure, consumers must act with caution and should consider EVERYTHING happening right now as temporary therefore requiring limitations of time and scope as well as protections from off-label uses of these temporary government actions taken in response to the COVID-19 emergency, the very opposite of a NEW NORMAL.
