OPINION:
The top health official in Florida, the surgeon general named by Gov. Ron DeSantis — Joseph Ladapo — just made national headlines for refusing to wear a face mask while meeting with a Democrat diagnosed with breast cancer and possessed of a fear of catching COVID-19.
Ladapo is right. And this Democrat is all that’s wrong in America right now. As if one Democrat’s health issue means that all have to abandon liberty? The flip-flopping of reason and individualism for insanity and collectivism goes on.
Polite society pushed by socialists and communists in the Democratic Party and media, along with their bureaucratic Big Pharma minions and partners who’ve taken over national policy, would have it believed that Ladapo is an evil and selfish son of a you-know-what, and the Democrat breast-cancer victim, state Sen. Tina Polsky, is the poor suffering defender of the little class.
Hogwash.
If Polsky can’t do her job, she needs to step aside.
And that goes for all the public servants, public officials, publicly paid frightened masses of the mostly left who’ve taken this coronavirus and turned it into a weapon of control.
In America, it’s freedom that guides, not fear.
In this land of liberty, it’s individualism that rules, not collectivism.
Is America, post-coronavirus, now supposed to be forever run by those who are sick, vulnerable to becoming sick, or simply afraid of one day getting sick?
When AIDS struck hard in the 1980s, it quickly became unlawful for those who were afraid of catching AIDS to demand those suspected of having AIDS to show proof of their non-AIDS status, or to otherwise impose any type of AIDS-related policies, regulations or rules upon individuals.
As Lambda Legal writes: “A person’s HIV status should not dictate what she or he can — or cannot — do at work. … In addition to the direct prohibition against discrimination, the two features of the Americans With Disabilities Act that play an important role for people living with HIV are these: workplace confidentiality [and] the right to reasonable work accommodations. …”
That’s common sense. That’s the reasonable, rational, logical and even compassionate response to a devastating health issue that rocked the nation.
This is not the tone of today’s coronavirus.
Yes, AIDS is different from the coronavirus. But the idea of “reasonable work accommodations” is the same no matter the medical issue, no matter the ailment, no matter the disability. At least, it should be.
And it’s not a reasonable accommodation to provide for an individual with a health issue by forcing everybody else in the workplace to adjust and change and change and adjust. Where would such end?
Would everyone in the workplace have to get a flu shot because of one who was more vulnerable to catching the flu?
Would everyone at work have to don face masks during cold season because of one who expressed fear about wayward sneezes polluting the air quality?
Would businesses have to implement mandated hand-washing and hand-sanitizing periods during the day so as to soothe the fears of those more vulnerable to sickness?
Will all employees eventually have to show proof of certain vaccines as conditions of entering their places of work? Yes; this is where this coronavirus crazy is headed.
The fear-filled have been put in charge of dictating policy.
The science that says not to fear is being pushed to the side for the science that demands fear.
The nation is rapidly becoming run by frightened sheep with zero tolerance for any fact and reason and truth that conflicts with their fright. All it takes is one with an entitled attitude, a misplaced, misguided sense of self-importance and a truly obnoxious quest for control and influence and voila, a hint at sickness, a whisper of fear of sickness, a well-timed mention of the need to protect others — to save lives! — is turned into policy clamps on freedoms, into irrational top-down controls on liberties, into bureaucratic stifling of personal choices.
“It was so shocking to me that he treated me in this manner,” Polsky said, about Ladapo’s reported refusal to wear a face mask. “If he is a surgeon general for the next several years, I am really concerned about a future public health emergency and not being able to rely on him for necessary guidance and proper scientific leadership.”
No. What’s shocking is that Polsky truly believes her health issue gives her the right to force others to wear a face mask.
The AP reported that Ladapo had offered to take the meeting outside, so as to — get this — accommodate Polsky’s fear of his maskless face, but the Democrat refused. Why?
“[T]he senator said she did not want to sit on the metal picnic tables on a warm day when her office was nice and spacious,” AP wrote.
Polsky is using her cancer diagnosis to try and control the political world. She epitomizes all that’s wrong with today’s Democratic Party, all that’s communist about those in today’s liberal camps.
“The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says cancer patients are at a higher risk to get severely ill from COVID-19 and may not build the same immunity to vaccines,” as the AP wrote.
OK. So? So what? That gives Polsky and other cancer patients the information needed to guide personal health decisions. Good information. Good to know. But that doesn’t give Polsky or any cancer patient the right to force those who enter their worlds to accommodate their fears by changing behaviors. That doesn’t give Polsky the right to insist that others wear face masks so as to make herself feel better. That’s not reasonable. That’s tyrannical.
Yet that’s how Democrats have been using the coronavirus: to score political points, to strip individual liberties, to control the population, to change voting and election laws, to close schools, to mandate vaccines that aren’t tested for the long-term, to shut down churches, to shut down private businesses — to control, control, control.
Enough. Enough of the nonsensical controls and non-scientific clamps. The solution to this power surge is simple.
Those who are sick or who are afraid of becoming sick need to adjust to a world that’s not sick — or stay home. That’s how this free society called America operates. Those who are sick don’t get the automatic right to dictate how those who aren’t sick behave.
• 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. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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