Some people respond, reasonably enough, that with the vast majority of hospitalized Covid patients unvaccinated, people should get vaccinated if only to avoid imposing the costs of their treatment on society. The argument is persuasive at one level: America’s system of health care combines the worst elements of every possible approach, including the socialization of the costs of routine care. But using the unintended consequences of prior socialist impositions to justify further socialist impositions is a move you can make in lots of situations. And it would make the requirement that hospitals treat patients regardless of cost a warrant for general government intrusion into your lifestyle.

Which brings me to the biggest fallacy in the current vaccine and mask mandates: They totally ignore the reciprocal nature of the freedoms being exercised. The major problem with people not wearing masks in movie theaters is that there are other people in that same theater who fervently wish everyone was wearing a mask. But if the latter are so worried about getting Covid, why didn’t they just stay home? Movie theaters are not an essential activity, and more important, being in an enclosed space with a large number of other people for hours on end creates considerable risk of transmission that mask-wearing can attenuate a little bit, but not reliably. And the same may largely be said of vaccine mandates.

The current mask and vaccine mandates, the appalling treatment of young children in schools, the arbitrary travel restrictions, and the like have moved so far beyond any rational basis that the rules themselves are arguably worse for the rule of law than disobedience of them.