“I am asking you to just hold on a little longer,” President Joe Biden’s top health official said recently in defense of lockdowns, mask mandates, and social distancing requirements. But “asking” is the wrong word when discussing mandates, prohibitions, and regulations.
State and local governments (especially those run by Biden’s party) are using the force of law and the threat of fines (or worse) to prohibit bars from serving willing customers, to require people to wear masks, and to clamp down on the ability of gyms, restaurants, coffee shops, churches, and schools to gather people together.
Governments are directly and significantly abridging the constitutional rights of free assembly and free exercise of religion, as well as the bodily autonomy and economic liberty that a free people are generally owed.
Why have so many people accepted these unprecedented restrictions? Because your own potential to contract the coronavirus affects everyone. If you get the coronavirus by carelessly exposing yourself at a bar, you and the others taking that risk are not the only ones who suffer. The people you come in contact with in the next few days could be unwittingly exposed to the virus, which in spite of its high survival rate, is far more deadly than the flu or cold — hence the half-million Americans dead.
When and where the cases have surged very high, such as in New York and New Jersey last spring, much of the country over the winter, and now in Michigan, contraction of COVID-19 has another externality: it threatens to overwhelm local healthcare systems.
So, the justification for infringing upon liberties over the past year has been a narrow one. Now, in most of the United States, that justification is no longer operative or will not be operative for much longer.
“Flatten the curve” does not apply where there is no realistic risk of overwhelming hospitals. Improved treatments have also made it easier for the healthcare system to absorb cases.
More importantly, there are early signs that the demand for vaccination is already being met. Some states have closed down or downsized their mass vaccination sites. Many states are now seeing appointments go unclaimed and doses go unused. It’s not a done deal: Some states with exceptional demand or poor administration or both still have people desperately seeking a shot. But that’s the exception.
In most of the country, everyone who wants a vaccine will have gotten the vaccine by the end of April. Already, most of the adult population has been vaccinated.
And this changes the moral calculus of visiting a crowded bar. The day is coming soon when all of the unvaccinated patients will be unvaccinated by choice. The only adults at risk from COVID-19 in these settings are the ones who made the choice to bear the risk.
Of course, children under 16 are not yet eligible for the vaccine, which is a cause for caution. But a year of data and piles of studies have shown that children are less likely to get COVID-19 and are extremely unlikely to get serious cases.
This week, many governors, mayors, and county executives will stand up and beg their neighbors to get vaccinated, now that appointments are going unclaimed. That’s great. Each of them owes it to their citizens to pair this plea with an announcement that most or all COVID-19 mandates, rules, and restrictions are being lifted. A free people deserves nothing less.
