Coronavirus – a safety analogy

In my opinion taking precautions to prevent coronavirus infection is analogous to following the rules of the road when driving. The general purpose of stop signs, traffic lights, speed limits, railroad crossing gates, and so forth is the safety of drivers, passengers, and others. They help to prevent accidents or lessen the severity of them. Likewise, wearing a mask, keeping a safe distance from other people, washing hands and using sanitary wipes, not sneezing or coughing on other people, and so forth reduce spreading of a virus that may be harmful, even deadly, to oneself and other people.

Refusing to wear a mask (with an exception if doing so truly hampers breathing) and so forth is akin to refusing to obey traffic laws. It increases risk for ones self and other people in the vicinity. That some part of government prescribes what preventive measures people should take is quite unimportant to me. If a business or private road or property owner had and enforced the same rules, would the person who objects still object? Refusing to comply with the only “reason” being freedom dismisses personal responsibility and the reality of the virus. One’s person freedom ends when it impinges the equal freedom of others, and vice-versa.

When I take precautions against the coronavirus, I do so for my self-interest and a regard for the health and lives others. What government says about it is unimportant. Likewise, I drive with my personal safety in mind, which has a consequent regard for the safety of others.

The free-stater man interviewed here doesn’t make the same analogy but agrees about taking preventative measures against the coronavirus. An article The Libertarian Case for Masks describes anti-masking as an irrational anti-government symbolic gesture that all but guarantees more government overreach.