Taking liberties
Sir: I feel that Matthew Parris is absolutely wrong about liberty (‘The libertarian case for vaccine passports’, 10 April). True liberty is that each individual has the possibility to live their life how they desire (within the law), taking full responsibility for any and all the risks they incur.
I am not responsible for anyone else’s health. To say that we have to stay indoors, wear masks, observe social distancing or have vaccinations because we would be killing others if we did not is blackmail. If you use the logic that the individual is responsible for the health of all other people then everyone who owns a car is directly responsible for every injury on the roads. The same reasoning implies that if someone else smokes, drinks too much or eats too much junk food then I am compelled to tell them to stop. Should I forbid anyone I know from making a bungee jump? We are exposed to risks at every moment of our lives. I alone pay the price for any decisions I make.
Howard Beach
Brighton, East Sussex
Free licence
Sir: I couldn’t agree more with Matthew Parris’s argument in support of vaccine passports: in essence that they would enable freedom rather than curtail it. To extend his motoring analogy, it’s quite respectable for a libertarian to oppose compulsory motorcycle helmets or car seatbelts. A vaccine passport is more like a driving licence. It doesn’t protect the holder but it does protect the rest of society, in that it proves that a driver has been taught how to control a car.
Paul Larsmon
Burbage, Wiltshire
A fitting salute
Sir: It’s poignant and moving that the peerless Jeremy Clarke, writing with such elegance and amusing sangfroid about his own serious illness, should have chosen this week (Low
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