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The COVID culture war: At what point should personal freedom yield to the common good?
Aug 02, 2021 3 mins, 21 secs

After more than 18 months of a pandemic, with 1 of every 545 Americans killed by COVID-19, a substantial chunk of the population continues to assert their own individual liberties over the common good?

It is a phenomenon that perplexes sociologists, legal scholars, public health experts and philosophers, causing them to wonder: .

At what point should individual rights yield to the public interest.

Against that backdrop, a striking paradox has evolved: About 99% of America’s COVID-19 deaths today are people who did not get shots.

Yet, the unvaccinated – who are more susceptible to infection and more likely to spread the disease – also appear to be most resistant to wearing masks.

It also means vaccines could prevent the mutation of more virulent coronavirus strains while hastening a return to economic and social normalcy. So, why do so many turn down the shots and shun masks.

Put simply, Sandel said, the resistance is not about public health: “It’s about politics.”.

Fauci and the CDC have issued guidance in favor of masks, then against them, and then for them again – in part because the virus itself has morphed.

President Joe Biden last week applied a carrot-and-stick approach, urging local authorities to pay $100 to unvaccinated people who get the shots while announcing that federal employees will face strict testing requirements if they are not vaccinated.

But in the absence of authority or fortitude to impose public health policies, federal leaders have largely deferred to state and local government.

“There’s just been such tremendous inconsistency in communications about this,” said Corey Basch, chair of the public health department at William Paterson University in New Jersey.

In May, after the Orange County Board of Supervisors announced plans to offer a digital record for residents who have been vaccinated, hundreds of enraged people jammed a meeting and denounced what they mistakenly believed was a mandatory COVID-19 passport system. .

Jeanine Robbins, 60, of Anaheim, who attended that event, noticed that nearly all the people opposed to vaccination were also maskless. “I think they’re just taking advantage, and they’re putting other people at risk,” Robbins said.

By contrast, Michael Thomas, a 62-year-old accountant in San Clemente, said he doesn’t believe masks work and he won’t be getting shots because “a person’s immune system will either fight off COVID or it won’t.”.

Thomas volunteered that he sees COVID-19 as a “war crime,” adding, “The guy who made it – the people who developed the virus – should be brought to justice.” .

According to The Associated Press, a picture circulating on right-wing social media sites, which purportedly shows  Faucci with then-President Obama at the Wuhan, China, lab in 2015, was actually taken at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C., during 2014

When the United States was founded, a Bill of Rights got locked into the Constitution to ensure that personal liberties were protected from a coercive government

The question is not whether government should constrain personal liberties in the public interest, she concluded, but when and how

For example, rather threats of jail or fines, those who refuse to take precautions might be banned from crowded venues or required to undergo regular testing. The point, Berg said, is to allow for a stand on personal rights by letting people make choices. 

Pamela Hieronymi, a UCLA professor who specializes in moral philosophy, said COVID-19 has revealed the “trickiness of freedoms”  She described various schools of ethical thought, noting that If someone asked four philosophy professors whether vaccines and masks should be mandated, there likely would be four different answers

Then she mentioned a book – “Assholes: A Theory” – by colleague Aaron James, which argues that American culture is producing a swarm of annoying, self-righteous people who behave as if they are so special that normal rules do not apply

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