'The balancing of individual liberty and public health may now be the most contentious issue in American life,' doctor writes

In 1905, Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan, a Kentucky Republican, wrote a landmark decision affirming 11 states' authority to require vaccinations. Kentucky has such a law, but no Kentucky official is advocating its use against the novel coronavirus. However, that hasn't kept some state legislators from sponsoring legislation to ban mandatory vaccinations, and some of the same legislators are defying Gov. Andy Beshear's emergency orders that ban indoor dining and require wearing face coverings indoors.

Harlan's decision is the starting point for an article in The New Yorker magazine by Dhruv Khullar, a physician and medical-school professor, titled "The Deadly Cost of America's Pandemic Politics."

"The balancing of individual liberty and public health may now be the most contentious issue in American life," Khullar writes. "Vaccines for the novel coronavirus are on the way, but until they arrive tens of thousands of lives depend on community-based intervention—such as masks, distancing, and isolation—that must be carried out by ordinary Americans. Their willingness or unwillingness will determine how many people die. Our differences of opinion, therefore, have concrete, immediate, and drastic consequences."

Khullar's first example is his home state of Ohio, where Gov. Mike DeWine faces strong pushback from many of his fellow Republicans for "one of America’s more aggressive Covid-19 responses. . . . Although DeWine has relatively high approval ratings statewide, he is struggling to position his decisions within a conservative movement that sees pandemic restrictions as ideologically objectionable."

After writing about some folks in his old home Stark County (Canton) who think DeWine has over-reacted, Khullar writes, "In the face of scientific uncertainty, economic pain, and conflicting values, it’s understandable that we disagree. But it’s also true that we know a lot about how the virus works, and that some views are beyond reasonable debate. Their persistence reflects a triumph of tribalism and the cowardice of those elected officials who have misused their influence, failing to protect the people they serve. . . . Disrupted education, vast unemployment, profound isolation—skeptics are right to say that the collateral damage of the pandemic is severe and troubling. But the cost of letting the virus run free is also vast."

Drawing on his medical knowlege, Khullar writes, "Pandemic skeptics often underestimate the sheer contagiousness of SARS-CoV-2 and, therefore, the risk that their behavior poses to other people. The virus’s ability to be transmitted asymptomatically makes it even riskier: even if we feel perfectly well, we could be spreading it. . . . Vaccines are coming, but the harsh reality is that they are arriving too late for tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of Americans this winter. Those people’s survival depends on the public coalescing around policies that are both effective and sustainable. If anything, the coronavirus vaccines heighten the communications challenge. With the end of the pandemic in sight, dissenters may hold more ardently to the view that continued restrictions are unwarranted; advocates may lose the will to persuade. And yet the virus killed ten thousand Americans last week, and will kill at least as many each week until we correct course. Amid this devastation, the battle for buy-in remains indispensable."

Khullar concludes, "The Biden presidency is an opportunity to reset how we talk about the virus, not just at the federal level but also in statehouses, hospitals, and public-health departments across the country. Biden has said, repeatedly, that he hopes to unify Americans. Almost certainly, this will require listening and responding to the concerns of the millions of people who see and experience the pandemic from a skeptical perspective. . . . We cannot stop talking to one another."