Defusing a Bomb
Atlanta, GA
August 21, 2021
Last week, like a bayonet in a minefield, my pen poked into dangerous ground. As you can imagine, the explosions came fast.
Some still do.
For the most part they’ve been proportionate, well-targeted, and the expected blowback of a fool-hardy foray. But none were deadly.
The last thing I want is for people to wince when my name appears in their inbox. What I sent last week is not my typical fare. Tho’ the importance of the topic has caused me to do more of it lately, I don’t usually like to wander that deep into a war zone.
But as I dust myself off and clear away the debris, there’s an unexploded shell that needs to be defused. It was lobbed during an email exchange I had in response to my recent note.
I was asked whether one person’s “right” to refuse masks or shots supersedes everyone else’s “right” to be free of known pathogens.
Let’s leave aside ample evidence that vaccines don’t work as we were told they would, and that masks hardly work at all. For the sake of argument, we’ll assume both shields are invulnerable to Covid.
The question posed was an interesting one, without what would seem to be clear answers. So we approach it from a few angles, like a rickety Cessna making several passes toward a foggy runway.
We start by gliding into the nature and extent of these competing “rights”. By doing so, we find that the skies clear, and visibility improves. The first thing we notice is our initial bearings were off because the original premise was wrong.
Why would we presume a “right” to be free of contagion? Do we each possess a God-given prerogative to not be inadvertently infected by a pathogen?
If so, we’ve never made a habit of acknowledging or enforcing it. If we have a “right” not to get sick, then we should have legal recourse if we do.
But when someone suffers the flu or drops dead of pneumonia, we don’t seek a perpetrator or try to bring him to justice. We chalk the illness up as an unfortunate fact of life, send best wishes or sincere condolences, and go about our day without casting blame, recrimination, or schadenfreude.
During the Swine flu, the Hong Kong flu, and the Spanish Flu, people didn’t think their “rights” had been violated because they left home (or stayed there) and got sick. And they certainly didn’t demand recourse. Till the last few years, the very notion (not unlike many ideas of recent vintage) would’ve seemed impractical and absurd.
Which means we’ll probably adopt it.
Or does this new standard only apply to Covid? If so, why? And if not, can I now sue someone for accidentally giving me a cold? Or need the affliction be more severe, like bronchitis, strep, or tuberculosis? Are some microbes misdemeanors and others felonies? On what basis?
And what about the weapon? Should we apprehend assailants who shoot germs from one room to the next, as thru an air duct or heating vent? Or should we capture only those who fire from close range?
And what if someone was exposed to an ill person’s breath, yet somehow avoided the ailment? Is that merely an attempted assault, bringing a lesser charge? How would we even know? Or is simply having an exposed face and virgin veins enough to presume guilt?
In countless ways, this fiasco has inverted the natural order. It used to be common sense and go without saying that if someone was afraid of getting sick, that he is the one who should take precaution. It never dawned on us to force other people to make such sacrifices to accommodate our own susceptibility…and then to shun, shame or subjugate them if they don’t.
But what of everyone doing “their part”, by wearing masks and taking vaccines? Are such simple steps really too much to ask to help to keep us “safe”?
And what of those supposed “rights” not to take a shot or wear a mask? Do we really have them? Or is breathing unobstructed air and choosing our pharmaceuticals now a mere luxury of an unscientific, pre-Covid age?
There are obviously rights to not wear a mask and not be vaccinated. A couple years ago…and forever before…almost everyone exercised or acknowledged them, everywhere and all the time. Masks were common in East Asia. But most people who wore them here were looked at as if they were paranoid, or weird.
But now…in the funhouse mirror in which the world is trapped…people doubt (and condemn!) what has been obvious forever. And this despite cross-geographical comparisons showing masks stop Covid the way a pergola protects against rain.
The real question isn’t whether rejecting masks and avoiding injections are rights. They clearly are. Nobody is inherently obligated to do either. The real debate is over where and how these rights may be exercised.
All rights are property rights. You can say what you like in public, or your own place. But not in mine. What deprives us of the “right” to falsely yell “fire!” in a crowded theater isn’t that the theater is crowded. It’s that it is owned by someone who prohibits such misleadingly disruptive screams.
If the owner permits people to yell “fire!” during sold-out shows, then someone is allowed to do it. The right in question is not actually that of speech, but of property. All of them are.
Likewise, to spurn masks or shots isn’t really about a fabric or a needle. It’s about property, from which all rights descend, and of which our own bodies are the supreme example. No one is obligated to put anything in his body. And everyone has a right to not wear a mask…until he enters another person’s place.
There, the rules may change. Then, our recusant can choose to adopt the owner’s code, or go elsewhere. Private property is the ultimate arbiter. But no government has a right to tell an owner the conditions under which he can’t (or must) let someone in. That governments regularly do so reveals not that they have the right; only that they‘ve usurped the power.
It’s said that those who avoid masks or vaccines are risking their health, and everyone else’s. Says who? “Health” is more than the avoidance of a single virus.
Again, leaving aside that the masked and the vaccinated regularly spread and catch this germ, how do we know the medical or mental condition of every person, and where Covid ranks on their list of potential risks? For most people, particularly the young, that risk is very small, and often negligible.
What if they’d suffer more from shot side-effects, social isolation, or economic deprivation than from Covid? Who is anyone else to insist they’re wrong, and to force them to choose the the former over the latter?
Besides it’s not the responsibility of a maskless or unvaccinated person to incur what he perceives as added risks to reduce those of somebody else…particularly when he doesn’t (and can’t) know what they are.
Everyone has different health considerations and time preferences. “Safety”, “danger”, “risk”, and “benefit” are all relative terms…and subjective ones. They vary for each individual, can change over time, and can’t be measured. They are qualitative, not quantitative. They’re personal, not public.
There’s a frustrating tendency to look at Covid thru a microscope. We need to view it thru a telescope. My background in engineering, economics, history, and philosophy incline me to follow relevant data, respect subjective value, examine past precedent, and anticipate the invisible effects of tangible acts. That’s what “public health” should contemplate as well.
Despite the monomaniacal focus of the last year, Covid isn’t the only danger in life. The actions people take to control, restrict, compel, and isolate others have impact beyond (and greater than) the alleged alleviation of a single virus. The mitigation measures affect everyone, for better or (as this experiment has shown) for worse, in countless collateral ways.
We need to consider costs, and account for trade-offs. How does wearing a mask affect other aspects of health? Does breathing thru a filthy fabric produce illness other than (or including) Covid? Does it affect fatigue, mood, or communication? What is the effect of not seeing smiles? How does it impact child development? Or adult interaction?
No epidemiologist or public health expert can know what specific actions every single person “should” take. There’s no “science” that can tell him that. All the “experts” can do is give their best assessment of viral traits and potential implications.
It’s then up to each individual to decide what to do about it. These aren’t merely, or even mostly, medical decisions. They’re primarily philosophic ones, based on the value scales, subjective judgment, and particular circumstance of each person.
But people aren’t being allowed to choose. They’re being forced to accept health decisions that total strangers are inflicting on them.
What’s happening now is horrifying. Arbitrary diktats prohibit people from engaging in simple activities of normal life. Because they opted against a medication, they’re being barred from restaurants, kept out of schools, and kicked from companies after decades of service. And this is merely the camel’s nose under the tent.
We are enduring the greatest globally coordinated crackdown on basic liberties since Adam delved and Eve span. In less than eighteen months we’ve gone from “fifteen days to flatten the curve”, to movement passes in Manhattan and soldiers on the streets of Sydney. There’s talk of prohibiting interstate travel for those who won’t comply with vaccination orders.
Some, including a growing list of doctors, are suggesting that those who refuse a vaccine should be denied medical care (and not just for Covid, but for anything!). Is that now the criteria? That anyone whose behavior (allegedly) contributes to his own health problems will be denied care if he gets sick?
Should those suffering side-effects from the shots suffer the same fate? After all, they also took known risks and incurred possible consequences, and might take a bed that a cancer, heart attack, or crash victim could’ve used.
And what about those heart, cancer, or crash patients? Did they make any life choices that facilitated their ailments? What did they eat? How much did they smoke? How fast were they driving? How little did they exercise? Did they get enough sleep? Enough sun? Do they meet the standards of modern moral judgment?
What if they brought the stroke, cancer, or crash on themselves? Why should they get a hospital bed? If government has an obligation to coerce people to avoid Covid, what about other “avoidable” ailments? Where does this end? Does it end? What’s becoming of us? And why do so few people seem to care?
Some will say it’s different, because heart disease and cancer aren’t contagious. But vaccination status doesn’t stop the spread of Covid, so using that as a basis for social engagement or medical care isn’t reasonable either. Nor is it “science”. This is purely vindictive punishment of those won’t obey. And it has health consequences of its own.
Many who refuse to take a drug (for whatever reason, including natural immunity) will lose jobs, friendships…and even their family. How many health crises will this cause? How much anxiety, depression, heart disease, drug usage, and suicide? Oh, well. As long as it’s not Covid, I guess that’s OK.
And apparently it is, because people are cheering for it. But it’s degraded and deranged. This isn’t about health, but control…and it won’t stop at vaccines.
Is this the way we want to live? For how long? When does it stop? What are the criteria? And why do they keep changing? For people pursuing power, a mutating virus is an ideal foe for fostering fear. It’s an invisible enemy in an unending war.
With tracking apps and movement passes, the precedent is being set. If “public health” can be a criteria for compulsion, other things can too. Adherents of restrictions will learn that the Regime will eventually disapprove of something they prefer, and turn on them as well. But by then it will be too late.
In all likelihood, it already is. Much as we want to deactivate the bomb, the fuse is already lit.
JD
