Skip to main content

The Right to be Left Alone

Someone asked on a message board the other day of a person who wasn't vaccinated, "What makes you think you can do anything you want?" It's a philosophical question worth answering. 

The Founding Fathers believed the people had rights, through God or Nature. They described them in the Constitution and later the Bill of Rights--and they are basically rights to be left alone. I don't have the right to go cough on the person who asked this question, but she doesn't have the legal or moral right to insist that healthy people stay home or take an experimental medicine, nor is she entitled to a risk-free life. 

This question made me start imagining what it might be like if the shoe was on the other foot.

* * * * *

Photo from Pixabay.

Imagine it's April 2022. Another new variant is going around, but the vaccines aren't stopping it. In fact, everyone getting sick has had a vaccine and rumors start flying that the illness is, in fact, a long-term side effect. But clinical studies show that the vaccines aren't causing the illness, they just aren't preventing it. As it turns out, natural immunity from exposure to the wild virus is highly effective at preventing the new one. 

Leaders know that people won't go through another series of lockdowns, distancing, and so on--nor can most countries afford it. New vaccines are at least a year off. They decide that come June, when it's warm in most of the US, they will start pushing vaccinated people to get exposed to the virus at a time of year when they're the least likely to end up in the hospital. This time, the old and frail will be protected.

But after two years of quarantines, masks, Zoom meetings and social distancing, decorum has gone out the window. "Hey, Miss Prissy!" kids yell at anyone, man or woman, wearing a mask. At the theater, where several employees have been voluntold to go get exposed, unaccompanied women get groped. Bars and clubs are rowdy and police are too busy to show up. Dogs are able to pass on the virus, and getting a few licks from one doesn't sound that bad, until you read that people have had their faces bitten. A few people even had to have surgery. "Those are rare cases!" people comment, before FaceBook takes down the story and fact checkers say there's no evidence the dogs weren't provoked. 

That's not all you read about: while the new virus is usually no more than a mild cold, some people are getting very ill from it, and it's not clear why. You don't want to get this virus and you're tired of being called a Nervous Nellie, you're tired of being nudged, you're tired of hearing, "Wait six months! You'll be in the hospital!" The people with natural antibodies are immune--why is it any of their business whether vaxxers infect each other or not? 

Meanwhile, Cuba isn't letting anyone stay home--they've ordered everyone to stay outside for two weeks to kill the virus. All manner of mayhem ensues.

* * * * *

There used to be an expression: I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it. The spirit of that saying is that it's rights, not agreement, that's important. It also implies that it's good to stick up for each other: you help me when it's my ox being gored, and I'll help you when it's yours.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This Just In: Yogurt Doesn't Improve Health

A recent study from Spain finds "In comparison with people that did not eat yogurt, those who ate this dairy product regularly did not display any significant improvement in their score on the physical component of quality of life, and although there was a slight improvement mentally, this was not statistically significant," states López-García. Most yogurt is pretty much pudding with a little bacteria . Pudding is a sugar bomb. Hard to believe the stuff doesn't improve health outcomes, isn't it? But as usual, researchers are calling for...more research. "For future research more specific instruments must be used which may increase the probability of finding a potential benefit of this food."
23 comments
Read more

Paleo Diet: Eating Differently from Everyone Else is Fine!

I've been seeing more and more articles by women (it's always women) whose heads have exploded trying to figure out life without yogurt and cupcakes. Oh, the shenanigans they get up to: bathroom problems from stuffing themselves with vegetables, paleo baked goods that don't taste the same as ones from the bakery, and especially the irresistible urge to eat "normally." The technical problems aren't hard to sort out: substitutes like baked goods will taste different because they are different, but an adjustment period of a few months will make those foods taste normal. And whatever you eat, don't stuff yourself. First, though, read a book by Loren Cordain or Mark Sisson to learn about the paleo diet before diving in. The articles I keep reading, though, have more to do with attitude: the urge to be exactly like everybody else or the urge to be helpless. If you're in the second category, I can't, by definition, help you. If you'd rather be Lu
19 comments
Read more

Robert F. Kennedy shows up at the FDA

 
Post a Comment
Read more

Decongestant Ineffective; Vibration Plate Works

A common ingredient in many cold medicines has been shown so ineffective that the FDA recently proposed taking it off the market. The ingredient, phenylephrine, "failed to outperform placebo pills in patients with cold and allergy congestion," say researchers from the University of Florida. "The same researchers also challenged the drug's effectiveness in 2007, but the FDA allowed the products to remain on the market pending additional research," according to CNBC .  Mostly placebos. Photo from Pixabay . I can attest that phenylephrine doesn't work. Before I stopped eating wheat, I constantly had nasal and sinus congestion. I helped keep Sudafed in business when the active ingredient was pseudoephedrine, but I noticed the PE (phenylephrine) variety didn't work at all. The only other decongestants I've found helpful are guaifenesin (Mucinex) and spicy food. Mucinex is expensive because it works! (The cheaper store brands work just as well, though.) Su
Post a Comment
Read more

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder .
18 comments
Read more