It isn’t over yet. School in this county starts Tuesday, and no one under twelve has been vaccinated.
Proposed for all vaccine and mask deniers: Smarten up! Get the vaccine and wear a mask in public. Listen to the science and change your behavior. Let’s get on the right side of this.
The debate over pandemic mask wearing and vaccinations should have ended in 1859, 162 years ago. It was in that year that John Stuart Mill published On Liberty which addresses the nature and limits on an individual’s power to express his or her personal freedoms and a government’s power to regulate those freedoms.
J. S. Mill was the champion of individual rights and Liberty. However, he wisely outlined the one necessary limitation on those liberties: All personal liberty is sacrosanct unless the exercise of that liberty causes harm to others.
Individuals are rational enough to make decisions about their own personal well-being. Government should only interfere when it is for the protection of society. Mill explained that rebellion, if truly necessary, should be allowed. However, the way to express those arguments should be in speech, but not in a way that causes actual harm to others. This is widely known as the harm principle: “That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his [or her] will, is to prevent harm to others.”
Mill is clear that his advocacy for liberty does not extend to all individuals and all societies. He stated that “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with Barbarians.” Citizens who wrap themselves in self-righteous indignation and proclaim their immunity from our government’s attempts to ensure public health through mask and vaccine mandates are those barbarians.
More recently, at the beginning of the 20th century, Oliver Wendell Holmes put forward the standard of “clear and present danger” based on Mill’s idea.
If you want to ignore the danger to yourself and others that you pose by not getting vaccinated, you should be at the back of the line for a hospital bed, and you should pay your covid related hospital bills one hundred percent out of pocket. You should not be allowed, as some covid deniers have done, to set up go-fund-me pages to cover your covid expenses.
Service personnel are often the only ones wearing masks in public. That’s not right! See one, wear one! It’s the right thing to do. If you aren’t extending that courtesy to the rest of humanity, vaccinated or not, you are a knucklehead!
President Biden announced plans to implement a federal vaccine mandate for companies with more than 100 people.
He did not mandate vaccinations for the recent refugees released into the US.
He did not propose vaccinations for all who receive federal benefits. People of Color are disproportionately unvaccinated and disproportionately subsidized.
“The United States is leading the world on vaccination donations,” Biden told world leaders and others participating by video. “As we’re doing that, we need other high-income countries to deliver on their own vaccination donations and pledges.” The goal is to get 70% vaccination rates in other countries.
The US rate is only 54%.
Richard said, “President Biden announced plans to implement a federal vaccine mandate for companies with more than 100 people.”
He might benefit from that proposal, but he should probably pull in his horns and let all companies decide for themselves.
Richard said, “He did not mandate vaccinations for the recent refugees released into the US.”
WinLoseorDraw suspects he would like to but finds it politically inadvisable.
Richard said, “He did not propose vaccinations for all who receive federal benefits.”
WinLoseorDraw repeats the previous comment.
Richard said, “People of Color are disproportionately unvaccinated and disproportionately subsidized.”
And disproportionally adamant about preserving their rights as American citizens.
President Biden said, “The United States is leading the world on vaccination donations,”
It’s good to be an American, and it’s better to give than to receive.
President Biden also said, “As we’re doing that, we need other high-income countries to deliver on their own vaccination donations and pledges.”
We can always hope. President Trump also tried to put the squeeze on those other fat cat nations.
Richard said, “The goal is to get 70% vaccination rates in other countries.”
Presumably the CDC has some evidence to support that number as being a generally effective threshhold in the fight against covid.
Richard also said, “The US rate is only 54%”.
That number would be a lot higher by now if there weren’t so many knuckleheads working night and day to prevent it.
I, as one of the dumbed down, appreciate the optimistic encouragement to smarten up. Former New York City and State Teacher of the Year, John Taylor Gatto wrote a book called “Dumbing Us Down.” I highly recommend it. Smarten up! reminds of a slogan on the wall of a public high school: Close the gap! But Smarten up! is supported with good reasons to stick and cover.
I got vaccinated on the first day available, there was no wait time. I have re-masked in stores starting with the July 27 CDC recommendation. My un-credentialed nonexpert sister told me to do so 24 days earlier. She is smarter than the CDC.
Mr. Gatto wrote that we are dumbed down because of forced mass schooling along with the entertainment-consumption-promoting media. We get our information about Covid from various media, anecdotes, and direct experiences.
A website called Unherd.com (I never heard of it before) cites a Carnegie Mellon study of 5 million subjects; out of six educational levels, from High School or Less to PhD. The highest, PhDs, have the greatest level of vaccine hesitancy, defined as “those people who would ‘probably’ or ‘definitely’ not choose to get vaccinated.” This supports Dennis Prager’s assertion that too much college makes people stupid.
For all our lives, media have over filled our brains with hype, hustle, persuasions, titillations, sensationalizations, omnipresent crises, action news, emotions, commotions, strange notions, distortions, and embedded political biases. It’s too much. We the dumbed down seek relatively safe or quiet bubbles within the surrounding infosphere. Long before this plague, trust in the media, government, and other institutions had declined and is now worse. And not just in the US.
One story reported that 29% know someone who died of Covid but the vast majority of those deaths were the very elderly. But now more young people are getting sick and maybe the vaccine and mask hesitants are slow or unable to get that message. Stories of people having mild symptoms abound. My doctor told me that a patient’s reaction to the vaccine was worse than his earlier Covid symptoms. Anecdotes are part of our information load. I just heard of a 25-year-old dying.
In Round One of this virus–Alpha, Beta and Gamma variants I suppose–the vast majority of those infected did not seem to be harmed while in many places government choked off the economy. It would be like cutting all speed limits in half to reduce traffic deaths. My economically high performing other sister texted, “I just don’t like to be forced into crap especially by the government, and yet they let every kind of sickness over the border.” She lives near the border.
Mark Levin reported an estimate that 40% of illegal immigrants test positive. Government and other institutions are run by us the dumbed down.
Viruses mutate, and will continue to do so and are now damaging and killing younger people. With millions vaccinated and millions not, we can confidently conclude that the probable benefits of vaccine are far greater than the probable costs. Wearing a mask indoors in public places is helpful too. Hand washing and distancing are good too.
“Keep the Faith,” said Cell Biologist Newtol Press in 1979. Keep faith in the evolution of microbes to adapt around our efforts to thwart them. We can try to keep up.
Excellent commentary, Richard. We are agreed that masks and vaccines are good for society. We are also agreed that destroying the economy and people’s livelihoods with shut downs is a mistake. Thank you for illustrating the necessary middle ground.
As your professor pointed out, this isn’t over yet.
Keep the Faith.