link to original reddit post by /u/2SpeedLeslie
This is a excerpt from the recent AIER Article Stop the Cartoonish Excuses for Covid Restrictions
The relevance of the distinction between third-party effects that violate someone else’s property rights and third-party effects that don’t is especially crucial today. Many economists defend lockdowns, mask mandates, and other Covid-19 restrictions as scientifically ‘objective’ means of dealing with externalities. Similarly, some libertarians justify lockdowns and other restrictions as being not only consistent with, but demanded by, the non-aggression principle.
Yet the relevant question is not: “Does Sarah’s breathing unmasked in public physically or psychologically affect third-party Silas?” Instead, the relevant question is: “Does Sarah’s breathing unmasked in public violate any of Silas’s property rights?” The answer to the first question is irrelevant; the answer to the second question is what matters. Only if the answer to this second question is ‘yes’ should an economist conclude that an externality is afoot; only if the answer to this second question is ‘yes’ should a libertarian conclude that Sarah is aggressing against Silas.
So what about Covid? Until March 2020 no American had a property right in being free of the risk of exposure to pathogens carried by asymptomatic individuals going about their normal ways of life. Because each of us has always, unavoidably, emitted into the air we breathe bacteria and viruses that potentially harm – and sometimes kill – others, life as we know it could never exist if each of us had a property right in being free of such bacteria and viruses spread by others.
No one expected to be free of such exposure. No one had the right to be free of such exposure.
And so there ought at least have been a presumption that this same rule holds for SARS-CoV-2. There ought at least have been a presumption that each of us continues to enjoy the legal and ethical right to go about our affairs publicly and without a mask despite the physical fact that, in doing so, we risk transmitting the virus to other people.
My opinion: You have absolutely no right whatsoever to virus-free/low-virus interactions. Viruses have have always been part of the human biome and conversing face to face with someone comes with the spread of germs. Demanding that someone else cover their face when they're going about their daily life is the request for a positive right.
Using the term "Global Pandemic" (put forth into the media by medical bureaucrats) doesn't magically allow you to mandate and dictate the behavior and business dealings of others. AIDS is also a global pandemic that kills. We don't mandate condom use. Chances are at some point in your life you've passed on a common cold or flu that made it's way to someone in the hospital or the elderly and it killed them. EVERY VIRUS might possibly kill someone.
Is this a violation of the NAP as it relates to asymptomatic spread? NO.
A comparison was made in another thread to walking around carrying radioactive material, it was a bad comparison but has some parallels. If you knowingly carried a radioactive material with the intent to harm that would be a violation of the NAP. If your clothes were accidentally covered in radioactive material and you didn't know, not a violation.
I would concede that if it could be verified that you knowingly had covid and then deliberately and WITH INTENT tried to spread it, that would be a NAP violation. But just walking around going about your day while possibly being asymptomatic without a mask is in no way infringing on anyone else's rights. Treating a non masked person as someone committing violence is absurd. But that's the narrative that these authoritarian chicken littles are in the process of pushing
With that said, Denver currently has a mask mandate, when in public, which I ignore. The efficacy of masks is still up for debate, and there is very little chance of spreading the virus while outside in the open air. I only put on a mask to enter a businesses that requires it. However, If a business here doesn't enforce the states mandate they are facing ten's of thousands of dollars in fines. So it's a bit different than the no shirt , no shoes argument. As the government is now mandating what you must wear to enter a private business.
I'm frustrated that more and more people are inventing and demanding rights to safety they don't possess and never would have dreamed of demanding prior to this year. It's concerning, as I believe we are now entering a new phase of "Hygiene Socialism" where the irrational fear of the pubic will begin dictating many aspects of human interaction that were unfathomable before.
Edit: A Word