Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

Nope, the issue is decidedly on the side of public health measures/mandates over childish tantrums and bogus claims about loss of freedom.


Surprisingly Strong Supreme Court Precedent Supporting Vaccine Mandates

In 1905, the high court made a fateful ruling with eerie parallels to today: One person’s liberty can’t trump everyone else’s

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/09/08/vaccine-mandate-strong-supreme-court-precedent-510280

The year was 1904, and when his politically charged legal challenge to the $5 fine for failing to get vaccinated made its way to the Supreme Court, the justices had a surprise for Rev. Jacobson. One man’s liberty, they declared in a 7-2 ruling handed down the following February, cannot deprive his neighbors of their own liberty — in this case by allowing the spread of disease. Jacobson, they ruled, must abide by the order of the Cambridge board of health or pay the penalty.

“There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good,” read the majority opinion. “On any other basis, organized society could not exist with safety to its members. Society based on the rule that each one is a law unto himself would soon be confronted with disorder and anarchy.”

“There is, of course, a sphere within which the individual may assert the supremacy of his own will and rightfully dispute the authority of any human government,” Harlan, writing for the majority, acknowledged. “But it is equally true that, in every well ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.”

Harlan noted that healthy travelers arriving in the United States on steamers that had suffered outbreaks of yellow fever or cholera could be held in quarantine against their wishes; so, too, could unwilling citizens be conscripted into the military in a time of national emergency.