This is true. Being free from things that cause disease and death is a privilege, not a right, a privilege given to those with critical thinking skills greater than those of a frozen Brussels sprout.
And while you may not have this right, you do have other rights: You can hug and kiss someone with a 103-degree fever and greenish-yellow nasal discharge, you can drink from street puddles, fill your water bottle from your toilet, and a lot of other “rights” that are, in many cases, kind of gross.
By this writer’s logic, all mandates that protect us and others are absurd – wearing seat belts, speeding in school zones, drunk driving, eating a chicken salad sandwich that has been sitting in the July sun for three days … oops, that one is not absurd. There is no mandate prohibiting that last one.
That’s within your rights.
Kevin Devine Durango