Rights and Liberties During a Time of COVID-19r’s Choice.

The subject of the role of government authority vs. individual liberty is often contentious, especially in a nation which is founded upon the ideal of individual liberty and often holds it above all other rights. The intersection where these two concepts meet has formed the cornerstone of a tremendous number of debates, court cases, etc. throughout the nation’s history, whether the debate be over healthcare, gun rights, or vaccinations to name but a few. We have now seen this debate shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic and the global response to the virus which have been unlike anything we have witnessed in modern human history. In a matter of a few months we have seen life as we know it grind to a halt. Entire nations have literally shut down, economies have been utterly decimated as industries were forced to close, leading to untold economic suffering the likes of which the United States has not seen since the Great Depression with at least 15% (the true number is likely far higher though as official unemployment numbers do not count all people without jobs) of American workers out of jobs. Millions have been infected worldwide with the U.S. alone accounting for nearly 2 million of the known cases globally and more than 100,000 Americans having died from the disease. To put this into perspective, more people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19 over the past 5 months than did U.S. soldiers during the entire course of the Vietnam War.