Business liability

One thing that caught me off guard during the pandemic was a discussion about holding businesses liable if they failed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. I had never before heard an argument about punishing a business because of a contagious disease.

Like most things in life, there is a balance here. In this case, there's always more that can potentially be done to prevent transmission. At some point, you have to avoid exploitation of a virus as a means of implementing authoritarianism. The government would be able to decide what businesses are expected to do, and businesses would be expected to blindly obey out of fear over government-imposed consequences.

If we want fundamental human rights and freedoms, we must accept risk. Even before the pandemic, the possibility of getting sick was a part of just getting out in the world. COVID-19 might be more severe than the flu, but that doesn't justify the insane level of government overreach that we saw. Fortunately, I didn't see the kind if follow through on this issue of liability that I feared.

Businesses should have taken precautions. I have no objections with requiring customers to wear a mask unless the order comes from the government. I also agree with more thorough and frequent cleaning of high-touch areas. I would have preferred to avoid vaccine mandates. We should not have to carry around paperwork everywhere we go just to live our lives.

The government should not try to effectively control privately owned businesses. Requirements and threats should have been kept to a minimum. Businesses could then make decisions for their specific circumstances. Since people didn't want to catch the disease, most businesses would have openly displayed what they were doing. If you were trying to avoid COVID-19, you could easily avoid businesses that weren't doing enough. Unfortunately, some states openly resorted to authoritarianism. That is when we need to fight back.