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.
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.
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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.
15 comments:
I suspect the Costco employees are cautious about enforcing the masking requirements because scofflaws are conceivably just crazy enough to start shooting at people.
I remember those “no spitting “signs in the NYC subways when I was a kid. I had no idea why they were there, and they always seemed very strange to me. But I was a kid and most of what the grown-ups did seemed very strange to me.
No I’m a grown-up, and most of what the grown-ups do still seems very strange to me.
If we speak of specifically of "Biden's vaccine mandate", we are not talking about directly overruling Jacobson v. Massachusetts. Why not? Because of Massachusetts, or any state for that matter.
As I understand it, anyway, the Jacobson court held that Massachusetts' mandate was lawful because the balance between individual rights and the public good had been weighed via legislature process.
President Biden arguably is not empowered to issue a vaccine mandate directly via unelected bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci, nor the CDC and OSHA heads. The U.S. Congress could, or the various states.
The way out of this pandemic may be evolution.
The evolutionarily pressures on any parasitic organism are:
* be as infectious as possible
* be as harmless to the host organism as possible
A parasite that immediately kills its host will never get a chance to spread. A parasite that can’t spread won’t find new hosts.
What happened to the 1918 influenza pandemic? It’s still with us in the form of very infectious but much less deadly modern versions of influenza. Hopefully, Covid is being moved along that path by the same set of evolutionary pressures.
I applaud establishments that require masks, and even more those that require proof of vaccination. However, I don’t blame employees for not wanting to be the enforcers. That’s not what they signed up for and it can be dangerous – there are some seriously deranged people out there. Once I was in a checkout line and the guy in front of me was unmasked and toting a pistol. I felt like asking him, “What’s the gun for, in case somebody asks you to put on a mask?” However I restrained myself, so I’m still here to tell you about it.
What Peter’s article makes clear is that Americans have always been this crazy. So much for our delusions of “American Exceptionalism.”
Michael,
What about people who can't get medical treatment because unvaccinated people are creating a hospital surge?
Where is the freedom to live for those people?
Mc,
I am not an anti-vaxxer. I think the people who refuse to get vaccines are allowing their judgment to be clouded by irrelevant (possibly political) concerns.
I needed serious surgery a year and a couple of months ago. I was fortunate to be living in the Portland, OR area where at that time the hospitals weren't slammed and I could get the surgery.
We have a huge disagreement in this country over individualism versus communitarianism. We do not have any kind of consensus about where to set that needle. I don't know the way to resolve that issue. It may be that no one does. I keep hoping that some particularly talented politician (or maybe a religious leader?) will come along and fix it for us.
Mike,
For around 400 years, America was settled by people who left Europe for a freer and less-regulated way of life. These people were, on the average, much more individualistic. The folks they left behind were, on the average, much more communitarian. As a result, America ended up significantly different from Europe on that axis.
This is a good part of where American Exceptionalism comes from. It's why we have Silicon Valley and SpaceX, and Europe doesn't. It's also why they have national healthcare and we don't. There are costs and there are benefits.
Undoubtedly a good move to forbear asking tut he ammosexual about his penile extender. I get very fidgety around the pistol packing yahoos, and it's going to happen sooner than later somebody will get killed for that innocuous kind of remark.
This was actually me. I screwed up by using the wrong Google account.
Mc,
I am not an anti-vaxxer. I think the people who refuse to get vaccines are allowing their judgment to be clouded by irrelevant (possibly political) concerns.
I needed serious surgery a year and a couple of months ago. I was fortunate to be living in the Portland, OR area where at that time the hospitals weren't slammed and I could get the surgery.
We have a huge disagreement in this country over individualism versus communitarianism. We do not have any kind of consensus about where to set that needle. I don't know the way to resolve that issue. It may be that no one does. I keep hoping that some particularly talented politician (or maybe a religious leader?) will come along and fix it for us.
This was actually me. I screwed up by using the wrong Google account.
Mike,
For around 400 years, America was settled by people who left Europe for a freer and less-regulated way of life. These people were, on the average, much more individualistic. The folks they left behind were, on the average, much more communitarian. As a result, America ended up significantly different from Europe on that axis.
This is a good part of where American Exceptionalism comes from. It's why we have Silicon Valley and SpaceX, and Europe doesn't. It's also why they have national healthcare and we don't. There are costs and there are benefits.
When I see an unmasked couple I think they both are hoping the other will get covid and die.
Michael -
What makes SpaceX and Silicon Valley more exceptional than the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, or the World Wide Web (invented by an English computer engineer)?
Some of who, Mike? Be specific.
America has SpaceX. Europe has the Ariane, which is primitive and mediocre by comparison. There is no way bureaucracies can keep pace with startups.
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