Opinion: Not your right to infect others

Stop signs are an infringement on my freedom as an American.

There are four of them between my house and my work, along a half-mile stretch of neighborhood streets through this little town of Santa Rosa. It’s almost always safe enough to coast right through those four-way stops; the risk is minimal. So I would consider it a serious injustice if I were ticketed for such behavior. After all, it’s my right as a free American.

Right?

If, however, you think I should be cited for such an infraction of the law, well then, you’d better be wearing a mask.

Last week, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham made masks mandatory in New Mexico. As did Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who had previously said the state didn’t have the authority to mandate such behavior.

A growing number of other states are also requiring masks or some other face covering for all who venture out in public (with certain reasonable exceptions, of course).

There goes one of our cherished freedoms. Just like those needless stop signs, the government is again trying to tell us what to do.

In New Mexico, there was an immediate objection to the governor’s declaration that $100 fines can now be issued to those who ignore her order. On her Facebook page July 1, the thread of public commentary that ran alongside her live news conference feed seemed to be mostly a mixture of people objecting to the infringement on their freedoms and others denying that a health crisis even exists. Such is the silliness of our public discourse these days.

Let’s be clear, opposition to the mask mandate isn’t built on any sort of principle. It’s more like the teenager who doesn’t want to do what his parents told him to do simply because they said he has to do it. Sort of immature, don’t you think?

As I have in the past, I’ll refer to what my father told me when I was a teenager: You can swing your fist around all you want, he told me, and that’s your freedom; but the moment your fist hits my nose, that where your freedom ends.

Translated to the here and now, I’ll add this: You can sneeze and hack and spit all you want when you’re by yourself, but the moment you spew your germs all over someone else, your freedom ends.

Even talking with someone, up close and without a mask, runs the risk of sharing your germs — which might just be that invisible virus called COVID-19 — and you don’t have that right.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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