I know this opinion will be unpopular to the majority on this website but when the personal freedom angle was used as a counter argument to refuse mask wearing it ignored the reality that personal freedom doesn’t allow you to possibly endanger other people. You can’t drive 100 mph in a school zone or on sidewalks to exercise your personal freedom.
It has been shown through data that asymptomatic people have infected others and to negative effect for those people. Some more fragile individuals have died when contracting the virus from younger supposedly healthy individuals who were shedding virus but with minor or no symptoms.
The best known guidance on virtually any Pandemic presently or in the past included what we’re asked to do, wear masks, social distance, and avoid large gatherings unless you’re fully vaccinated. In other countries around the world that followed that guidance across their population more successfully have a much smaller rate of deaths percentage wise and hospitals that aren’t overrun with the unvaccinated. That data should matter to Americans because it shows how our division and ignorance have resulted in thousands of deaths that didn’t have to happen in the supposedly educated and evolved United States of America! Our death toll compared to other advanced nations should be an embarrassment for Americans but instead we’re so self-absorbed we can’t be bothered to acknowledge it!
We continue to show the world how little we care for others and how selfish we are relative to any type of unified approach to battling a virus that has proven to be deadly for way too many people. We can’t put political division aside even to unify against a worldwide virus that continues to infect and kill as most educated people should.
For a supposedly Christian nation to show this indifference to its neighbor by ignoring simple guidance defies the second greatest commandment from Jesus! The first being” Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul followed by LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF!”
I doubt this person was removed due to one editorial. She personified the selfish angle with that editorial but we don’t know the whole story. This may have been the final straw of many we don’t know. Generally, it takes more than one issue to cause an action such as this to take place, especially in a student run enterprise like the O’Colly is.