Public health is often called the invisible shield and works best when it is not noticed. When public health works, our lives are freer. We do not need to think about the clean water from the tap in our home, whether the food we purchase from the grocery store is safe to eat, or where our waste goes when we flush the toilet. We can freely walk in our environment and play and swim at our beaches. These are clear public health wins that improve our lives and increase our freedoms.

Our invisible public health shield could not prevent the emergence of a novel coronavirus, and we struggled to stop the spread. As a last resort against overwhelmed hospitals and catastrophic losses of life due to COVID-19, public health interventions of social distancing, reduced movement and commerce, remote schooling, and quarantine and isolation were introduced. Instead of enhancing our freedoms and improving our lives, these public health interventions limited our liberties.

This tradeoff between public health intervention and infectious disease control is not new. Trading ships were held for forty days (quarantine) before they could sell their wares in Venice to prevent the spread of plague. During the Revolutionary War, George Washington required his soldiers to be inoculated against smallpox. Even the United States Supreme Court has found that individual liberties can be limited for the common good in the fight against infectious disease. Still, these limitations of freedom should be a last resort.