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by nybble41 1754 days ago
Don't forget:

Article 29. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. ... In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. ... These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Which between them basically nullify articles 1 though 28 to the extent that the infringement can be justified on the basis of "morality" or "public order" or "duties the community"… which is how governments aiming to present themselves as anything more than petty criminal gangs have always justified violating human rights, with or without the UDHR.

Regarding the original quote, though:

> you don't have a right to participate in the public

You do have a right to participate in the public—or more precisely, no one has the right to stop you from interacting voluntarily with whichever members of the public you choose, so long as the other parties consent to the interaction. However, if that participation in the public leads to you getting someone else sick through your own negligence or reckless disregard for others' welfare then you are morally responsible for the consequences of that infection and liable to make the injured party whole, or as close to whole as they can possibly get. Ergo, you ought to take steps to ensure that doesn't happen, for example though vaccination, for your own sake as well as others'.

1 comments

Got it. There are no human rights. Thanks for spelling it out for the rest of us.
How did you read that into my comment? There certainly are human rights. The UDHR just doesn't protect them nearly as well as it should. Eliminating the limitations that articles 29 and 30 impose on the rights enumerated in the rest of the document would be a good start, along with certain other contradictions (articles 22, 23, 24, 25, 26.1-2, 27.2, and 28—you can't have a natural right to services which someone else would have to provide to you; that implies slavery, which is contrary to article 4) and some irrelevant commentary (articles 13.3, 25.2) about the authors' preferences about how society is organized which has no bearing on human rights. But the first 20 articles are mostly fine. They should have just stopped there.
Sorry. I quoted a somewhat non-controversial source, then didn't pick up that you were rightfully describing that UDHR is weak, not prescribing that human rights are obsolete unless we all just take the vaccine.