Doug Morris

We must not let this push us into swinging to the other side of the same false coin.

An example of necessary increase in risk would be a case where someone has a legitimate medical reason for not masking or not vaccinating. We may need to work on this some more for the purpose of writing laws. I am trying to clarify one philosophical point. I am not trying or claiming to give an encyclopedic treatment of all the technical issues of medicine and the philosophy of law that might be relevant to deciding what exactly the law should say. I am not doing, advocating, or condoning any of these things. I am not asking for an absolute guarantee. I am saying we should rationally determine at what point increasing physical risk rises to physical force.

No, I am not saying that. That's a wrongheaded way to look at it. We do not need to identify any chains or individuals in chains to prove that failure to mask or to vaccinate increases the risk of spread of the disease. It appears you will never understand that I am saying that unnecessarily increasing such risk can rise to physical force. It is a technical issue whether we emphasize controlling spread or we let the spread rip and hope for natural immunity. I do not trust your sources of technical information.

I am not asking for a blanket elimination of risk. I am saying that unnecessarily increasing physical risk can rise to physical force. My comment about risk and death was a response to the bizarre statement that life increases risk.

Does this mean we should not have laws against reckless driving, reckless firing of a gun, reckless burning when fire danger is high, or any other form of reckless endangerment? I am not saying that possible future infections are fully actual. I am saying that already existing germs are fully actual and that physical endangerment can rise to the level of physical force. We would need such information to justify suing or prosecuting someone for actually causing harm. We do not need it to prove endangerment. An immigrant does not endanger anyone by simply entering the country; there is no justification for restricting entry. Anti-immigration is driven largely by xenophobia, racism, protectionism, and blaming immigrants for violating laws that violate their rights. Exactly what sort of gun control? Exactly what sort of environmentalism?

It is not for open-ended collectivist nonsense like "the good of the group". It is on the grounds that failure to vaccinate increases the risk of spreading disease, and that this is physical force. Germs molest people.

Someone who does not have a respiratory system should not be required to mask or to vaccinate. To put it another way, if we ever build rational computer systems, they should not be required to mask or to vaccinate.

To say that an action is initiation of physical force is not to say that liberty is not for people performing that action. We can have laws against such actions as speeding, letting one's dogs run unleashed, or disturbing one's neighbors' sleep and still recognize that people who do such things are entitled to liberty. If you want to attack my views, you should address the arguments I have made on this website to support my claim that failure to mask or to vaccinate can rise to the level of physical force. You should explain where you think those arguments go wrong. You should not smear me by putting words into my mouth.

If fruit is hanging low, that does not mean we should ignore it.

This can be true, and there can still be a risk that that person will spread the disease.

I have never spoken of " 'murder' by Covid" or anything like that. You must have badly misunderstood one of my posts, perhaps the one in which I said that Hitler and Stalin probably had laws against certain actions that should be viewed as very serious initiations of physical force and are widely recognized as very serious crimes. If I have belabored over and over a single point, it is because, over and over, someone seems to be ignoring or misunderstanding it.

Do you think if you say why, whYNOT might feel less need to make his posts? If you succeed in convincing me, I will say so, and whYNOT will almost certainly feel less need to make his posts.

Ayn Rand assumes that the unvaccinated pose no threat to anyone else. This is not true. That's probably true of some people, but this does not mean we should swing to the opposite extreme. There's still enough harm and death that it is natural and reasonable for people to react strongly to it.

Requiring people to mask and/or vaccinate does NOT require them to stop acting and living.

There are preventive actions people should be required to take. It is easy to come up with examples involving guns, cars, swimming pools, and animals. This includes requiring rabies vaccination. It also includes limiting one's animals' freedom of movement, even if one is not sure to what extent the animals are capable of aggression against people, animals, or property.