Those wanting pandemic-related restrictions to go are not thinking about the collective
Demonstrators call for the reopening of California, outside the California state capital building in Sacramento on May 7 2020. Picture: REUTERS/STEPHEN LAMin Sacramento on Thursday for a second time in less than a week to demand that California governor Gavin Newsom lift pandemic-related restrictions so that people can exercise their God-given right to spread the coronavirus.
If that sounds familiar that’s because it’s essentially the same message pushed by protesters in 2019 during the legislative battle over SB 276, a bill to make it harder to exempt children from mandatory vaccinations. Protesters framed their position as a defence of personal choice, even though the bill didn’t deny parents the choice to leave their children uninoculated against measles and other easily preventable diseases.
It prevented them only from enrolling their uninoculated children in schools, where they might risk the health of other people’s children. Vaccination opponents lost that fight, thento sign on to their fringey, anti-science crusade to repeal the law through a ballot initiative. Polls show that most people understand that vaccinations are overwhelmingly safe and effective, which has been affirmed in study after study.
Along the way they are pushing their signature combination of junk science, misinformation and conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 is a hoax by the government to subdue Americans, for reasons never made exactly clear. They say they want “medical freedom”, but to us it sounds more like they want the freedom to do whatever they want, pandemic be damned, even if it means other people might get sick or die because of their actions. People have a right to endanger their own lives, but not those of others. /
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