Liberty and Rights

I suppose everyone is going to have a "cerebral" take away from this Covid19 crisis. Mine is perhaps this set of questions:

Do we understand what liberty means? Can there be rights without responsibilities? Is freedom of speech unconditional? Are there no occasions when the right to dissent can be suspended?

I for one have wished several times since the pandemic started that my government declare a state of emergency in the county, suspend rights, be dictatorial, and just win this battle.

The sheer destruction this virus has caused over the last two years! Healthcare systems collapsed, so many doctors, nurses, cops, essential service providers sacrificed their lives, and yet: there has been such utter lack of cooperation all around! It often came to a point that I honestly stopped caring if folks walking around without masks, arms around shoulders, singing yaarana songs, contracted Covid and died. What pissed me off is that they accelerated the spread of the pandemic, overloaded health services and put medical staff and innocents all around at risk. I've often wondered if we could just refuse treatment to those deliberately violating basic protocols like wearing a mask and avoiding crowd build-ups despite repeated requests. I mean, why should those ventilators and oxygen tanks be wasted on covidiots? Why should doctors, nurses, other staff, and innocents, pay for others' covidiocy?

There have even been "No Mask Activists"! Goodness Gracious! This after centuries of science education and incessant advice from experts to wear masks and maintain distancing!

I honestly don't believe that people defying simple instructions like "wear a mask", "maintain physical distancing", "avoid build up of crowds", deserve their civil rights. They put others at risk. I would rather they be just thrown in a jail somewhere and we do what's needed to end this crisis.

But the government itself has allowed religious festivals that involve congregations of lakhs of people, there are election rallies every day where lakhs gather, ...

And now we have Omicron that may see much of the above repeated yet again!

Where does one start?