LETTER: On Wordsworth, Locke and the coronavirus

A Wednesday letter to the Review-Journal from Barbara Nelson excerpted Wordsworth’s “The World is Too Much With Us.” In her letter she said, “We must proceed with caution and scientific knowledge and without consideration of political motives.”

Government must protect people from exposure to harm from the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this protection must be balanced against the loss of individual freedom. Freedom is a form of health. As John Locke stated: “This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man’s preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together.”