In
the midst of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, libertarians in San Francisco,
California objected to wearing face masks. Other people there were simply fed
up with wearing masks by late 1918. The libertarians, who objected on the basis
of rights, actually prevented the Board of Health from renewing a mandate to
wear masks.[1]
In early 1919, another spike in influenza cases there led the board to put a
mandate in place. So in March of 2020, the failure of mass transits and retail
stores to enforce physical distancing and the failures a few months later to
enforce mandates on wearing face masks to reduce the spread of the coronavirus
can be seen as recklessness (and fecklessness) that could have been prevented
by looking back a hundred years. But could the willful disregard of store
policies and local law both by customers and store managers have been prevented
had business had heeded history? I contend that human nature, which had not
changed in such a short time by evolutionary standards, played the heavy, or
anchor.
The full essay is at "On the Depth of Selfishness."
1. Kristen
Rogers, “What
the 1918 Flu Pandemic Can Teach Us about Coronavirus,” CNN.com, September
25, 2020.
