The Justification for Restricting Our Rights in Times of Emergency

A reader asks:  We, the vast majority of people on the planet who are healthy, are being restricted because a very small percentage of the planetary population has a virus. Would (you) like to tell me what’s right about that?  This is a sincere question.

I have no doubt that it’s a sincere question.

I’m reminded of David Koch, who, when asked what he thought was fair taxation, responded, “I get to keep my money.”

Both you and he seem not to understand that living in a civilization sometimes requires us to do things that we’d rather not.  Koch enjoys protection from the police and fire departments, the criminal justice system, and the U.S. armed forces with its $700 billion annual budget.  During wartime, the military is augmented with young people who are drafted, i.e., forced to enlist or face criminal penalties.  Koch drives on roads, over bridges and through tunnels, to get to airports whose airspaces are kept safe by a vast network of electronics and people paid to monitor them.

There are lots of justifications for ignoring our scientists, each one totally stupid.  Earlier today, there was a church in Louisiana full of over one thousand Easter worshipers whose pastor explained when questioned as to his decision to hold the service, “Satan will not prevent us from coming together for Jesus.”  Now, if it were just he and the other morons in the church whose health was jeopardized, this would not have made the news.  The problem, of course, is that the virus is highly contagious, and it attacks intelligent and compassionate people just as well as ignorant fanatical pigs.

It’s true that the vast majority of people on the planet are healthy, and there is a reason for that, i.e., we have taken precautions, and placed restrictions on our population to slow the spread of the virus, and it’s still on a path of exponential growth.

No one will ever know with any certainty what would have happened had everyone thumbed his nose at our scientists, but it would have been horrible beyond description.