I think your perspective shows one side of a continuum between Personal Freedom <----> Collective Safety. It would seem that at some point maybe in the 50's or maybe the 80's a majority of people decided the debate around this was solved and the US would favor personal freedom over everything else. It's clear that as a society we have decided to re-open this debate.

While the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle the most important part of this issue is the nuance. It's become very common to lash out and villainize people on the other end of the spectrum or just people in a slightly different place on the spectrum. I think we first need to carefully consider the variables and hedge our statements.

For example, a friend of mine in her 50s was recently verbally accosted, by an employee of the store she was at, for not being vaccinated because she was wearing a mask after it wasn't required . But she is in fact vaccinated and wants to continue to wear a mask because she has many health problems.

Just assuming the other side is needlessly putting other people at risk because they are selfish is overly simple and will fail to address the root issues at play. The same is true for the other side of the argument, assuming people hate freedom and want to make all your decisions for you because their evil or think your stupid is also failing to address the real issues.

With some nuance and understanding injected into these conversations we might be less polarized and have options that work for more people.