"Spitting is dangerous, indecent, and against the law!"

Tuberculosis was killing people.

Governments tried to outlaw spitting on sidewalks and streetcars. 

People protested and spat anyway.

COVID vaccine and mask resistance is nothing new.

In the decades before and after the year 1900, men habitually spat in public. Tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in America. New science connected germs and tuberculosis. Doctors reported that microbes containing TB were present in large numbers in expectorate. People stepped on spit and carried it into their homes, got TB, got sick, and died. 

It was an era of public health and a new consciousness of the responsibilities of citizenship. Individual freedom, including the freedom to spit in public places, ran up against the notion of communicable disease and the public good. The public health idea went beyond TB. Cambridge, Massachusetts passed a law requiring everyone to be vaccinated against smallpox. Henning Jacobson said he had the personal liberty to be unvaccinated. He refused vaccination and was fined. He appealed. The case went to the Supreme Court: Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 1905. A 7-2 majority affirmed Massachusetts' authority. If the Supreme Court reverses Biden's vaccination requirement, it will reverse this 116-year precedent.

The anti-spitting effort of the 1895-1915 era mixed social pressure with laws. A great many people continued spitting, citing the same arguments we observe today regarding the COVID. 

***It is a fundamental right to spit at will. We have body autonomy and the liberty to spit.

***The medical science is unproven and the so-called experts are wrong about how TB is spread.  

***The health benefits of spitting outweigh the dangers of spit. Spitting clears the lungs of mucus.

***Laws prohibiting spitting are tyrannical government overreach on a harmless and widespread practice.

***The laws are unenforceable because everyone spits, publicly or secretly, so there will be spit anyway. 

***Nobody wants to enforce laws against such a petty crime.  Besides besides the enforcers are hypocrites; some of them spit, too.

That is all familiar today. One difference is that the anti-spitting effort was visibly led by women. Anti-spitting leaders positioned spitting as uncultured, un-sanitary, and disrespectful to women, whose long skirts brushed against the spit.  The anti-spitting effort mixed the stick of the law with a carrot of social approval for being sanitary. 

Opponents of current COVID mitigation efforts made Dr. Anthony Fauci a target. He represents scientific expertise and government compulsion, both of which generate opposition. In hindsight, a campaign like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, visibly led by a bipartisan array of everyday seniors-- a Seniors' Right to Life--might have been more successful in avoiding dug-in opposition from the right. 

There appears to be little social pressure to wear masks in Trump-supporting areas of rural Oregon. At the Grange Co-op store in Central Point, Oregon almost all shoppers were mask-free yesterday. At Costco yesterday a person at the doorway reminded people to be masked. Once inside, about 10% of the shoppers openly removed their masks.

I asked store supervisors if they would attempt to get mask compliance. A supervisor with the name-tag "Damon" shrugged his shoulders and said there was nothing he could do. Enforcement is unpleasant and difficult. Attitudes need to change for behavior to change. Sometimes they do. I saw no one smoking as they shopped. I saw no spit on the floor.