Pandemic Response And Liberty

      I keep stumbling over alarmist articles about how inimical the response of the various levels of government has been to liberty.

     Not seeing it.  If you want to point to widespread "lockdowns*" -- all now ended in the U.S. -- as economically damaging, you're right.  Since all the other kids -- oops, countries -- had jumped off that cliff, there was no getting around the macro-scale harm; local and state-level shut-downs have hurt small businesses not deemed essential.  At best, we've got a recession underway and it may be worse.  There's no undoing it.  And with the business shutdowns came limitations on the size of any gathering of unrelated people.†  As an early response to an unknown virus that was spread by prolonged close contact, that was just about the only measure public health officials could take until there was an adequate supply of masks.  

     Those sweeping restrictions have all been rolled back.  That's the nature of public health restrictions: they follow not the whims of officialdom but our best knowledge of the illness.  There are still limitations in many areas on the environments known to be especially friendly to the spread of this and similar viruses: a loud bar, with people check by jowl for hours, yelling at one another over the music, is a prime situation.  Dining too close together indoors is a known hazard.  So we've got limits.  They're less in places where you can leave your mask on, so much less that the retail establishments around here are almost back to normal, with maximum occupancy limits set at 75 percent of the Fire Marshal's pre-pandemic numbers.  Since they rarely got that crowded back then, it's the difference between a speed limit of 60 and one of 45 on a narrow, winding road.

     Mask requirements aren't an infringement of your liberty, no more than the health requirements to wear shoes and shirts inside businesses.  The whining and outrage over a simple piece of cloth or paper mystifies me.  And the spread of misinformation is simply staggering.  (I have sat in doctor's offices three time since this began, masked and with a blood-oxygen monitor clipped to my finger; it reads the same 98 to 97 percent that it did when I wasn't wearing a two-layer cloth mask.  True, I wasn't running a marathon or bricklaying, but I endure doctor's offices in a kind of harshly suppressed panic, so I'm not exactly "at rest," either.)

     All of these things will run their course, and go away as soon as we're through this pandemic.  That's the nature of public health actions; eventually, the mumps or scarlet fever run their course and the County Health Commission takes the sign off the door and you don't have to get your groceries delivered.

     It's easy to glibly claim that government restrictions once imposed are never lifted -- and it is true that due to government interference, still aren't allowed to dig your well right next to your privy, those despots! -- but public health measures put in place to combat the spread of disease end once the disease has run its course or been fully controlled.  If this were not the case, we'd still all be wearing masks that were required during the 1917 - 20 influenza pandemic and all the public swimming places closed in response to polio outbreaks would still be shut down.  Government incursions like taxes, payroll withholding and professional licensing only persist if they're getting something from them. Cui buono?  If it doesn't put money in their pockets, it doesn't stick around.  Especially if it irks the electorate.

     Governments don't like depressions, and strive to avoid them.  They're not happy with pandemics with big death tolls and multiple days of lost work sweeping through the populations that elect 'em, either.  There's nothing good in that for them.

     I do not trust the goodwill of government -- and I don't have to.  I can rely on their greed and self-interest to set them to work getting us through this mess in the best -- and most taxable -- condition they can manage.

     If all you're doing is whining and spreading misinformation (a lot of it sourced from Russia's FSB-run rumor mills and "news" outlets, when you can track it back), then I don't have time for you.
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*  You were never locked down, Karen.  Nobody nailed your door shut and you could go out jogging or even drive the Audi whenever you liked.  But the Snip'n'Blow was closed, and that charming little antique store where you found those lovely lamps, and you couldn't get into Kroger or the IGA unless you wore a mask and isn't it just so awful.  No, it isn't.  Grow up.

† If you had ten children, four grandparents and assorted aunts and uncles all under one roof, or if your entire commune amounted to a larger population than the smallest towns, nobody was going to roust you out.  It's not just gathering in one group, it's that the group shares the same volume of air, and then goes home to their families -- or to other groups.  That's how illnesses spread.