Wearing a Mask is Not an Impingement of Human Rights, It Is an Exercise of Them

Wearing a Mask is Not an Impingement on Human Rights, It is an Exercise of Them

I think the main problem with people not wearing masks is that many people are not informed that they are to be worn to prevent infected people without symptoms from spreading the Coronavirus to everybody around them.  Many people think that the masks are only to prevent them from getting sick, and that they are young and healthy and have the right to take risks, since they will not get really sick.  There also has not involved social pressure memes or comments to embarrass people not wearing masks.

We were used to seeing signs in restaurants:  No Shoes, no Shirts:  No Service.  Other than odors, these never seemed to be necessary.  But nobody protested them.  People are required to be dressed in public, nobody goes around nude asserting it is their rights.  Believe me, it would cause car accidents.  So a mask requirement cannot be argued against as a personal or Constitutional right. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”   

This comes from the Declaration of Independence.   Before Liberty, come Life, which is the purpose of wearing masks, until we get a vaccine, and until everybody takes it.  It also blocks the 15% of the infected from being hospitalized, and not being able to pursue their Happiness.

The Preamble to the US Constitution is:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[note 1] promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This has the phrase:  “promote the general Welfare” which also refers to health as well as economics.

We have laws to protect pedestrians, to protect drivers, to require helmets for motorcycle riders, many of which were considered as restrictions on liberty, but all of which protect both the drivers as well as others on the road.

The CDC today said that the actual number infected could be 10 times the number that have been confirmed in tests.  

The medical community now says that those with a BMI greater than 30, which is 42% of the population, are at risk for serious reactions to COVID-19.  That is labeled Obesity (Class I).

The new cases are now shifting to a younger population.  In several locations, half of the cases are of adults younger than age 44.  Pregnant women may be 6 times more vulnerable for hospitalization.

I think that the Individual Liberty argument arises because it was used as a ground to fight any restrictions on gun ownership, by the Gun Lobby, as well as the argument that any incursion on gun ownership, no matter how small or reasonable, would lead to the totality of “taking our guns away”.  The entire vast library of US, State, and Local law books are filled with laws that have limits.  That is a false argument.

Some say that the Coronavirus is not worse than a cold or the flu.  Right now, the death rate per detected case is 5% in the US.  Even if the CDC’s new estimate is that 10 times as many people are infected, that still leaves a real death rate of 0.5%, which is 5 times more deadly than the flu.  The flu’s also have vaccines, and do go away in the summer, which the Coronavirus is not doing.

People who do not mask and choose to hang out closely with others who do not mask are now confronting 24 million who already are infected, or 7%, or 1/14 Americans.  They will eventually become infected.  Without a mask, they will infect their friends and family.  They have a 15% chance of ending up in a hospital, and running up bills in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, which responsible people will be paying off for their lives.  Thanks a lot!  Do those about to be victims of you and your illness funders have the right to require you to wear a mask to protect ourselves?  You bet we do.  We will also be paying the hospital bills of your family and friends that you infect.

Everybody wants their jobs and income back, and to make things the way they were.  The non-maskers, starting with the President, are actually doing their best to fuel the new exponential growth of the virus, but this time in states not hit before.  They will not be appreciated by workers put at risk by contact with them.  The non-maskers will only have themselves to blame when they lose their jobs again.  It is up to us maskers to inform them of the truth.

Just a short table of where the Body Mass Index (BMI) reaches 30.

California Governor Newsom also asks that people cooperate giving information to contact tracers, which will remain confidential.

Hopefully, with a vaccine created and distributed within a year, we will all be able to unmask, and get on with our lives, obeying all of the thousands of other rules which we were raised with.