Richard Knutson’s letter against mandatory vaccination (“Don’t enforce vaccinations,” Oct. 29) shows the ridiculousness of using “libertarian” arguments to justify what, if adopted, would be in essence the senseless deaths of millions of people. Knutson writes, “When you impose your will on another, it is either unlawful, illegal, a tort or a trespass.” That is precisely what happens in a pandemic created by those who impose their will on allowing reservoirs of viruses to exist in unvaccinated individuals; these reservoirs create the potential for deadly mutations.
We know this mechanism all too well because it happened in the great influenza pandemic of 1918-19. If libertarians really want the kind of “freedom” Knutson advocates, perhaps they can persuade the Centers for Disease Control to isolate them and inject them with Ebola or Marburg virus.