nydailynews.com 26 Dec, 2020 12:00 am

Individualism: COVID’s final casualty? A pandemic rethink of an all-American value

The United States is a nation which above all else extols itself as a beacon of freedom and liberty, a place where individuals have the right to be who they are, say what they wish and do what they desire with minimal interference from high. This concept of freedom has been packaged and sold to us over the generations as something uniquely American.

The United States is a nation which above all else extols itself as a beacon of freedom and liberty, a place where individuals have the right to be who they are, say what they wish and do what they desire with minimal interference from high.However, few circumstances have elucidated the true nature of what such freedom represents in the United States as the COVID-19 pandemic.This perspective extends into ideas surrounding vaccine hesitancy, gun-ownership rights and more — all policy points which remain not only fiercely controversial in the United States, but also lead to significant morbidity and mortality.” The perverse result of this paradigm is that many believe they are channeling the best American values when they protest the usage of face masks as an infringement on one’s rights even as they insist that the right to quality health care is a liberal folly.

Most Read At the end of such difficulties, we as a society can hopefully come to the realization that without proper public health, health care and welfare infrastructure, we are all at risk, whether from COVID-19 or the next public health crisis, or from health threats that garner fewer headlines but have taken millions of lives over many generations.As distribution of long-awaited vaccines ramps up, we are reminded that the Latino immigrants who toil our fields, the janitors who sterilize our everyday surfaces and the grocery clerks who work for minimum wage, are simultaneously upheld as heroes and in many cases denied a living wage or access to essential health care.

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