People are being faced with a choice between a rapid economic recovery and protecting the lives of vulnerable people. In The Lancet in 1883 one author wrote “A man’s liberty is not to involve risk to others” and “We cannot see that there is any undue violation of personal liberty in the sanitary authority acting for the whole community, requiring to be informed of the existence of diseases dangerous to others”. They created the “harm principle,” which asserts that while individual liberty is sacrosanct, it should be limited when it will harm others: “The sole end for which mankind is warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty and action of any of their number, is self-protection,” Mill wrote in On Liberty in 1859. In the 19th Century it was argued that cities and towns had the authority to take necessary steps to ensure the communal “sanitary welfare” in terms of freedom, freedom from disease. With coronavirus, your freedom stops when it endangers others by facilitating transmission of a highly communicable disease. The right to swing your fist certainly stops at another person’s nose. The court explicitly rejected the claim that “liberty” under the Constitution includes the right of individuals to make decisions about their own health in instances where those decisions could endanger others. The court declared, “Upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.” The constitutionality of a state law requiring compulsory vaccinations against smallpox was being discussed. The most relevant decision for today was issued in the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1905. There is an old saying that says “your freedom to throw your fists about ends where my nose begins”.Īnd your freedom to not wear a mask ends when I am in your presence as I and the rest of society do not want our health to be impaired just because you think your personal freedom is being somewhat restricted. Therefore, for the good of society and to help reduce health-care costs, these minimal restrictions on personal freedom are a smart step in the prevention of the spread of the virus and its consequences. However, when they are in close proximity to others, they spread the virus (usually unknowingly) when not wearing a face mask.
They are called asymptomatic carriers as they have the virus but they show no signs or minimal symptoms of having the virus. There are persons in our society who are carriers of the Covid-19 virus and do not realise it. Persons in the vicinity of a mask wearer are not protected from all the germs and/or viruses which the mask wearer possesses but they are protected from the vast majority exhaled by the wearer. It is also meant to protect others from the germs or the virus of the mask wearer. Wearing face masks is not just meant to save the wearer from the coronavirus. In both cases, fatalities and injuries decreased after the respective laws came into effect. Same thing happens with the law requiring seatbelts to be used in vehicles and for motorcyclists to wear helmets.
There is certainly a restriction on individual freedom.
#Your freedom ends where mine begins free
When scientists first suggested world-wide social distancing as the only feasible way to suppress Covid-19, they were the first to admit that that might be difficult to work, in a so called free society.Īnti-stay-at-home, anti-masks, anti-testing, anti-vaccine protesters, base their arguments on their own individual rights not on the general rights of the people around them. Safety has an extended meaning when considering Health, it is a society issue not just an individual right. Personal freedom actually ends where another’s safety begins. I have always believed that one person’s freedom ends where another’s begins.įreedom is not a one meaning word, there are several meanings but two are very important at this moment, political and social freedom: the freedom of the individual in relation to other people and to the state.