With COVID, ‘personal freedom’ threatens societal good. Leaders, you need to step up
In looking at COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates, there is an apparent conflict between personal freedom and the good of society. There have been such conflicts forever, of course. That’s why society recognizes the need to pass laws, to adjudicate such conflicts between personal freedom and the good of society. Before there were systems of societal laws, society had religious pronouncements.
On the prohibitive side, let’s start with the Ten Commandments. Society’s leadership promulgated that the personal freedoms of murder, theft and false witness testimony were outweighed by the benefit to society of prohibiting these behaviors and punishing transgressors.
On the protective side, society has numerous mandates designed to protect people from natural consequences, including automobile seat belts, motorcycle helmets, a minimum drinking age, a minimum age to purchase tobacco products, childhood immunizations and many more examples. In each of these, we can find a spectrum — from a mandate mostly aimed at the individual who is directly affected by it, to society at large which is the target of protection. For example, immunization against tetanus (an infectious but not contagious disease) is aimed at the immunized individual. Immunization against measles or chickenpox, on the other hand, protects other people, particularly adults, who might suffer from being infected by children. Chickenpox pneumonia can be lethal, for example.
We are apparently at a stage in the evolution of our society in which the pendulum is swinging back toward prioritizing personal freedom and away from the good of society. Or perhaps the good of society is simply being ignored in the honoring of personal freedom, as if the issue were black and white, right or wrong, rather than society’s constant responsibility to adjudicate conflicting values. Black and white and right and wrong are powerful, self-righteous messages, I know. They are more like religious pronouncements. These messages resonate with voters. I recognize that.
Reality-based data can help leaders recognize when it is important to prioritize the good of society. COVID-19 transmissibility and mortality data are good examples here. The data supporting vaccines and masks are clear — if prioritizing the good of society is perceived as outweighing that of personal freedom.
The message that seems to be ignored in this current debate is that prioritizing personal freedom results in natural consequences of spreading the virus though society, with resultant preventable illnesses and deaths. People may have an easier time ignoring or denying these natural consequences when the link is invisible and the victims are not known. What is easy to ignore or deny is the natural consequence that unvaccinated people who do not wear a mask may not, themselves, get seriously ill or die, but they will spread COVID to someone else in our society who will get seriously ill and die.
Leadership has a responsibility to lead, however, as well as to represent society. It is sometimes a challenge to recognize when leadership is called for over representation. It should not, however, be such a challenge to recognize when the good of society outweighs a personal freedom, when a personal freedom naturally results in inadvertent, avoidable harm to others — even death.
I long to see our leaders stand before their constituents and demonstrate leadership for the good of our society. I long to hear leaders teach their constituents which reliable sources of data to trust. I long for leaders who recognize that the individual voters who elected them collectively form a complex society reflecting naturally conflicting views, the resolution of which it is the responsibility of leadership to address.