When someone, somewhere, decides what is essential…

Someone, somewhere, has just decided what is essential to me—and what isn’t. What is useful here, and what is incidental there. What can be sold to me, and what must not be. Someone, somewhere, has just decided that one business can stay open while another must close its doors. That one can survive while the other must fade away.

By placing the people of Martinique under lockdown, our leaders had only one goal: to slow the spread of the virus. They made this decision with incomplete information in one hand and many unanswered questions in the other, convinced in good faith that the actions of some were endangering the lives of others. They made a difficult decision that no one would want to make in their place—a decision that was inevitably imperfect. We cannot hold this against them.

But one might still wonder…

A relaxed lockdown—one that gives some people free rein while restricting others—inevitably creates a sense of injustice and a decline in civic responsibility. Yet, in the crisis we are currently facing, everyone’s individual commitment is essential. But when someone, somewhere, begins to divide people into «essential» and «non-essential» categories, that’s when dissent arises—the first step toward division.

Because yes, we now have to explain to the cobbler that his trade isn’t essential, to the bookseller that we can do without his services, to the hairdresser that we no longer need him, to the tailor that he can go tailor elsewhere… and so on. Yet these very same so-called «non-essential» professionals were the first to promote preventive measures; they all invested in stringent protocols to protect their employees and customers; and, in their own way, essentials in the fight against the epidemic. And that tomorrow they will be essentials to the survival of our economy and our jobs.

And to top it all off, rather than letting all retailers operate freely while imposing a few strict rules on them—rules they would be the first to defend— someone, somewhere, is scouring the aisles of big-box stores to decide what is «essential» and what is not.

But perhaps there are objective reasons why the “half-lockdown” strategy is more effective than any other? Perhaps there is a valid explanation as to why spreading customers out across neighborhood stores is more dangerous than concentrating them in just a few retail locations? Perhaps someone, somewhere, has studied the economic, social, and health impacts of the collapse of thousands of businesses that will never recover from their forced closures? In that case, having swallowed our bitterness, we will have to bow to our leaders’ strategy. For nothing must undermine our unity.