covid-19 and the Social Responses thereto: Penal and Criminological Lessons, Human Rights and Rule of Law Implications

Abstract

In late winter and early spring, the new coronavirus called sars-CoV-2, which causes covid-19 infection, has made and kept headlines across the world. Some called it the first virus superstar. An excitement akin to that experienced when watching a horror movie – a mixture of primal fear and impression that it is not real, just a film, playing somewhere else (in China) – turned with incredible speed, in a matter of days in fact, into a real shock, fear and disorientation, when first the number of infected and then the number of deaths started to exponentially grow in Italy, right on our doorstep (in the case of Slovenia, quite literally). What was particularly interesting from the outset was not so much its environmental and health aspects. We have had worse, experts kept reminding us in order to calm the population who started hoarding toilet paper, masks and hand sanitisers. Most of the people mocked these individuals and a number of funny memes on the topic of the new coronavirus ensued. One of them was a photo of a product promotion seen in one of the Delhaize supermarkets (Belgian supermarket chain), advertising beer, specifically Corona beer and the Belgian fruit-flavoured beer Mort Subite, by placing a sign before the