A teaching colleague is in the hospital with Covid pneumonia. He’s high risk. He has a lot of life yet to live.

What’s so insidious about this particular bug? How quickly it spreads and the fact that someone with no symptoms can quickly spread it to 20,000 unsuspecting people.

I’m all for preserving and exercising freedom. That includes the freedom to not spread germs to others. The freedom to care about how our actions—and inactions—impact others. The freedom to do no harm.

These are freedoms that doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers exercise every day. They’ve done the math. They’ve studied the microbiology and the physics and the chemistry.

Freedom has a cost. It’s called responsibility.