Journal of the Plague Year 6

Defoe refers to the experience of the plague as ‘a visitation,’ as if the disease arrived to London albeit uninvited, almost like the arrival of an unpleasant, even distant relative. Suddenly, you open the door at the bell and there was Cousin Fred on the doorstep with a Gladstone bag and wearing a backpack. He would be accommodated, he is family, but to yourself you groaned and wondered, how long would he stay? Oh, how badly would my life be disrupted! 
     When the plague visited London in 1665 the magistrates demanded the quarantine of the infected and set Watchmen before the houses of the sick to secure the City from the sick, but it was not a popular order; those living within the house had to remain in the house and they were not happy about the restriction. But the lock-down was necessary for the welfare of the community. “It is true, that the locking up the Doors of Peoples Houses, and setting a Watchman there Night and Day, to prevent their stirring out, or any coming to them; when perhaps, the sound people, in the Family might have escaped, if they had been remov’d from the Sick, looked very hard and cruel . . .” Requests were made to the Magistrates for exception to the restrictions, but the city’s leaders remained adamant. “But it was a publick good that justified the private mischief; and there was no obtaining the least Mitigation by any application to the Magistrates.” That is, to circumvent the lock-down people engaged in all manner of stratagems to circumvent the lock-down, but finally these ‘private mischiefs’ that would only exacerbate the condition of Plague and were stopped.
     Who decides on what is good for the public? Isaiah Berlin’s essay “Two Concepts of Liberty” discusses the implications of two forms of liberty or freedom, words he uses interchangeably: “positive” and “negative” liberty. Negative liberty refers to the idea that an individual may not be interfered with in the exercise of his freedom, whereas positive liberty refers to the idea that in the exercise of my freedom I can do what I want. Now, the distinction is not so clear, though in his essay Berlin historicizes and explores the consequences of each version of freedom. Let me offer at least two distinct potentialities. What if in the exercise of my freedom I put another in danger: I want to drive my car at 100 miles per hour; or in the current pandemic I refuse to wear a mask or maintain social distance and therefore continue to spread the virus? Is it appropriate to restrict these personal freedoms? Not according to Jim Jordan, Republican congressperson from Ohio. And yet to insist that people wear masks, maintain social distancing and endure lockdowns does restrict a person’s freedom to do what s/he wants to do, and as we have seen often destroys businesses and lives. Is it appropriate to restrict these freedoms?
     If people were more aware of conditions; if they were better informed of current situations; if they were better educated, then it would not be necessary to coerce people by some external authority. To ensure this condition officials would have to establish institutions to ensure that rational considerations become a primary rationale for and determinant of action. Trump’s lies about the pandemic kept people in ignorance regarding the real threat from the coronavirus. Indeed, his own willed ignorance of conditions exacerbated an already fraught situation. Trump’s bravura regarding the wearing of masks called into question the warnings of scientists and medical personnel and led to super-spreader events that finally infected not only Trump but a large portion of White House staff and supporters who attended his mask-less rallies. Trump’s farcical and ignorant promises at the outset that the virus would soon be gone dangerously minimized the deadliness of the ‘visitation’ and led to the deaths of many who might have survived had they known better how to protect themselves and others and therefore chose to live with greater caution and more care. Isaiah Berlin offers this caveat: “ . . . we recognize that it is possible, and at times justifiable, to coerce men in the name of some goal (let us say justice or public health) which they would, if they were more enlightened, themselves pursue, but do not, because they are blind or ignorant or corrupt.” And he quotes Condorcet who wrote “Men still preserve the errors of their childhood, of their country and of their age long after having recognized all the truths needed for destroying them.” I have long considered that therapy should be required for all as are childhood vaccinations against tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps and polio, though it weill be acknowledged that a small minority legally opt out of such prophylaxis treatment. We do insist that children be educated mostly schools but alternatively at home to the age of at least sixteen years, but I have long bemoaned the advocacy of a curriculum that eschews rational exercise for the instant rewards of fulfilling limited quantifiable objectives.
     And what of negative liberty then? I remember clearly a professor complaining when the government had mandated the wearing of seat belts that his liberty to do as he pleased was denied. Well, yes, but this same man never refrained from buckling himself into an airplane seat. Or of people who objected to the banning of smoking in bars and public spaces. I expect the demand of a Stop sign be obeyed. The nature of society and communal living demands that freedoms require some regulation. Berlin writes, “The extent of a man’s or a people’s liberty to choose to live as he or they desire must be weighed against the claims of many other values, of which equality, or justice, or happiness, or security, or public order are perhaps the most obvious examples. For this reason, [freedom] cannot be unlimited.” I can live with that. So wear the mask.