The Death of Personal Responsibility

The light at the end of the tunnel has finally arrived.

Fourteen months since the debut of lockdowns and social distancing, a staggering 152.1 million Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine at the time of this writing. 114.3 million of them are fully vaccinated.

With another 2 million shots being administered every day, the number of Americans at risk of death from contracting COVID has plummeted. Cases in nursing homes, which are responsible for 32% of all COVID deaths in the U.S., dropped an astonishing 96% between December and May, while national cases sunk more than 80%. Meanwhile, 25 states have ended all of their restrictions.

The most significant number, however, is actually a date: April 19, the day when every American adult became eligible for a COVID vaccine.

But despite the historic success of the three approved vaccines, officials are loath to relinquish the control they have enjoyed since last March.

“15 days to flatten the curve” quickly morphed into “flatten the curve until we have a vaccine.” Three months into the vaccination campaign, the message from the bureaucrats has shifted yet again. Now, restrictions will probably remain in place until the U.S. nears “herd immunity,” or close to 85% of the population according to Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Reaching that goal is ambitious, of course. It would mean that many of the 25% of Americans who don’t want to be vaccinated will, eventually, decide to get the shot. The federal government is already doing its best to convince vaccine skeptics to change their minds. In fact, the COVID conversation has already shifted to the last remaining issue of vaccine acceptance.

Lockdowns, especially the near-total shutdowns of last March, should never have happened in the first place. But as egregious as they were, they pale in comparison to the notion that it is the government’s job to enforce restrictions for the benefit of people who are unwilling to protect themselves.

It may sound insensitive, but anyone who dies of COVID because they refused to take a free, highly effective vaccine deserves no sympathy. I feel no moral obligation to wear a mask and limit my contacts when there is a safe, proven mode of protection available to the entire public.

Similarly, the federal government has no responsibility, moral or practical, to mitigate the pandemic beyond completing vaccine distribution. There should be no “gradual” return to normal for the rest of the year until the U.S. “really turn[s] on the after-burners and get[s] a lot of people vaccinated,” as Fauci said.

The government certainly had a role in the public health crisis – primarily to ramp up and maintain testing capacity, an area where the Trump administration initially failed. But its proper role was always to provide us with the information and tools we needed to make decisions for ourselves and our families to combat the virus. Today, politicians have convinced us that public health measures cannot end until the virus is virtually eradicated from American life.

Officials’ priorities on the national stage seem strikingly similar to those of college administrators. Though the death of a college student from COVID is so rare that it often makes national headlines, schools have imposed draconian limits on social interactions that will remain in place until at least the end of the school year and potentially into the fall. Students at Washington and Lee University have been kicked out of campus housing and sent home, put on social and/or academic probation for a year, booted from sports teams, and required to write reflection essays for the crime of hanging out with friends in a group bigger than 6 or daring to socialize with anyone not wearing a mask.

Although the number of Americans who are seriously endangered by COVID continues to drop dramatically as the vaccination campaign continues, most college administrators will keep restrictions in place, at least to some extent, until the students themselves receive a vaccine – even if the vast majority of students have no risk of hospitalization or death from the virus. On the national stage, the situation is less intense but the same in principle: until COVID is eliminated, not just mitigated, Americans have no right to evaluate their own risk and act accordingly.

Indeed, that sense of personal responsibility has eroded to the point of no return over the last year as the nanny state grew to terrifying proportions. Curfews, eviction moratoriums, and hefty unemployment boosts, to name a few, have imbued the American people with the dangerous conviction that it is the government’s role to take care of every inconvenience we might face.

That notion was only encouraged with Biden’s signing of another $1.9 trillion in COVID spending in March, bringing total pandemic borrowing to a staggering $5.3 trillion. Taking on so much debt when a full 20% of the population had already received a vaccine is problematic in itself, but the third round of individual checks has proven that the federal government can hand out an arbitrary amount of cash to virtually everyone with no political consequences.

Take a look at all the progressives who castigated Biden for “only” including $1400 checks instead of his promised $2000, or those who complained that $1400 was not enough to fund all of their monthly expenses. And stimulus checks have become an incredibly popular policy, with 78% of Americans in support. The reason is obvious: who in their right mind would consciously reject “free” money?

Through COVID, the government has expanded its control over our choices to an extent that I never expected to witness in what was once the land of the free. Our culture will struggle to rid itself of the now-widespread notion that the government should interfere at every level of our lives. As remnants of lockdown measures linger through the summer, fall, or even winter, Americans with a commitment to liberty should resist the culture of compliance so that we might finally put an end to the COVID fiasco.

This article first appeared on The Future Conservative, a political blog run by Dennis Hull ’22 and Jack Fencl ’22. Check out https://www.futureconservative.com for more of their writing.

[The opinions expressed in this magazine are the author's own and do not reflect the official policy or position of The Spectator, or any students or other contributors associated with the magazine. It is the intention of The Spectator to promote student thought and civil discourse, and it is our hope to maintain that civility in all discussions.]