By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO — Although too I welcome the loosening of the regulations regarding Covid-19, I wondered why so many people were congregating to watch concerts or fireworks displays on July 4th as if the pandemic was completely over. A third of the adult population has not even received its first shot of vaccine, and, its members overwhelmingly constitute those who been hospitalized or have died from Covid-19 in the past few months. The Delta variant is more easily communicable and causes more serious complications. Moreover, there’s a world outside the United States where the percentages of the vaccinated are even lower. As Yogi Berra articulately put it, “It ain’t over till it’s over!” It’s easy to love a document that guarantees the individual pursuit of happiness, but the pandemic should have taught us that restraints to personal liberty are sometimes necessary for the collective welfare of society. Thus, today’s column is intended as a serious corrective to the Declaration of Independence.
The Declaration of Interdependence
When in the course of viral events, it becomes necessary for a nation to overcome the political polarization which divides it and respond to the pandemic infecting it by heeding the findings of science and favoring the common interest over unrestrained individualism to prevent further contagion for the sake of mankind.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created susceptible, that they are not endowed by their Creator with immunities to a novel disease, and so must take those actions which limit its spread to protect their lives, the lives of their family, friends, and neighbors since mortality terminates not only life, but the pursuit of happiness. To secure the public health, governments are instituted to insure the common welfare with the consent of the governed. That whenever individual liberty becomes destructive of this end, it is the Right of the government to impose minimal measures like wearing masks, keeping social distance, and getting vaccinations until the overwhelming majority of people can resist the virus and its variants. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments that fail to enact such measures are derelict in their responsibilities because the inconvenience and repressiveness perceived by some should not outweigh the suffering and death that will ensue if the pandemic is not brought under control. But when a long train of conspiracy theories and intransigencies pose a risk to common good, then it is the should mandate safeguards so that the population will not succumb to the disease or transmit it. Such has been the patient sufferance of those who have complied with such guidelines and now are jeopardized by the fanaticism, gullibility, and irresponsibility of those who refuse to do so. The history of the past president was a history of repeated misinformation and political posturing exposing both his followers and opponents to a scourge that could have been more effectively contained. But don’t take my word for it, listen to one of the founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin: “In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the smallpox taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation.”
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Baron is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted via lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com. San Diego Jewish World points out to new readers that this column is satire, and nothing herein should be taken literally.
Good read!!