Massachusetts — China: What’s the big difference?

OPINION:

Health authorities in Massachusetts ordered all students, age 6 months through college years, to take the flu shot as a condition to returning to school — a forced medical mandate that bypasses parental rights and free choice and even, some might say, constitutional limits on government. Meanwhile, this in China, from The Associated Press: “When police arrested the middle-age Uighur woman at the height of China’s coronavirus outbreak … she was forced to drink a medicine that made her feel weak and nauseous, guards watching as she gulped.”

Hmm. Geographically speaking, Massachusetts and China are as far apart as — well, Massachusetts and China. But medically speaking: Massachusetts maybe isn’t quite so far removed from the communist country. Hyperbole? 

You decide. But a caution flag is nonetheless in order.

“The government in China’s far northwest Xinjiang region is resorting to draconian measures to combat the coronavirus,” the AP wrote.

“The new vaccine requirement is an important step to reduce flu-relation illness and the overall impact of respiratory illness during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Massachusetts Department of Public Health wrote, explaining the new mandate.

The common theme is this: COVID-19 is dangerous, and the government knows best how to handle the situation.

That’s part and parcel of communist life; China’s residents have been accustomed to top-down heavy-handed dictates from their dear leaders. It’s how that nation governs.

But America is supposed to be different.

America is supposed to be a shining light on a hill.

America is supposed to be the example of individual freedom — individual freedoms as they come from God, at birth, and not from government, by whim of politicians.

And Massachusetts?

Massachusetts was once upon a time the crown of liberty glory — the state that gave birth to the likes of the original tea party, the Sons of Liberty, the right to religious worship absent government controls.

Now?

“[Massachusetts authorities] are forcing us to inject something into our child that we don’t agree with,” said Mike Megan, one of hundreds of parents who stormed Boston to protest the state’s mandated flu vaccine, WBZ-TV reported. “I just think we should be able to choose what goes in my son’s body. We can say ’yes’ or ’no,’ and the government shouldn’t say it for us.”

Yep.

Massachusetts, after all, isn’t China.

Neither is America.

And all Americans need to be on their toes to make sure long-cherished individual freedoms aren’t trounced and trampled in the name of medicine. COVID-19 isn’t so devastating that it gives U.S. governing authorities the right to behave like Chinese communists. Not even a little.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.