An outbreak or an urge to have more power?
While most people, including doctors, are trying to protect themselves from getting infected with this novel virus, some 'leaders' are looking at this as an opportunity to augment the amount of power they have. It is blatant that in times of crisis, the measures are going to be equally as harsh in order to completely eradicate the existing problem. Therefore, I do think that leaders should make the citizens' life stricter, in some cases, even though Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, called the measures "draconian."
On the one hand, the measures taken by the government are taken in such way to achieve the best upshot. For instance, we may see this in the movie 'Contagion', where people aren't put in quarantine, thus engendering the worst case scenario. There are around 24 million deaths, robberies become a daily activity for a plethora of people and citizens spread fear and panic world-wide. Furthermore, the measures taken today are almost emulate to the ones taken one hundred years prior, during the so-called 'Spanish flu'. The government had seen results only after they had closed schools, restaurants, shops and placed restrictions on transportation, mandating social distancing and banning public gatherings.
On the other hand, there are a plethora of reporters who are outlining the fact that the measures taken by the government are mostly in their favour. For instance, the president of the Philippines was given both emergency powers and $5.4 billion to deal with the pandemic. Moreover, the government had given him a few weeks prior the opportunity to take over private businesses. Furthermore, the president of Romania has given an open speech where he was bragging about the fact that the authorities have given around 78000 tickets, even though people don't work anymore. This way the government is getting richer behind the citizens' backs.
Furthermore, we may see that in Iceland, schools aren't closed and people are going to work but there are restrictions on public gatherings. In comparison to the Spanish flu, Coronavirus doesn't affect that many young adults. Some virologists say that being isolated during Coronavirus isn't beneficial for people, only that they should be more careful about being in public and, therefore, responsible. This is a 21st century medicine, where people should totally understand the threat and know how to protect themselves without changing their paradigm.
Given the above mentions, I tend to think that the measures taken are beneficial for humanity, in order to get the least deaths while it still is a hiatus from using new techniques to alleviate the threat of the virus. Therefore, letting the leaders to have more power.