Five thousand years after the Egyptians demonstrated science’s ability to hold death at bay, Florida’s governor is committed to denying his constituents that benefit.

The Egyptians invented a device that archeologists call a Nilometer. Basically a column erected in the upper reaches of the Nile River, it measured the depth of water that would flow downstream to irrigate a narrow ribbon of arable land.

Too little or too much predicted a crop failure, famine and starvation, unless grain from a previous harvest was stored.

Currently Floridians are contracting COVID-19 in numbers that threaten to overwhelm the state’s hospitals. Its positivity rate for those tested for the disease was 20.7% as of Aug. 17; in Illinois, it was 5.9%.

Yet Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office has threatened to deny salaries to school district administrators who violate his prohibition on requiring students to wear masks. A federal court enjoined his ban on cruise-ship operators requiring proof of vaccination from passengers. DeSantis vowed to appeal the decision.

Why would he do that? During the renewed COVID-19 outbreak, those who die of the virus are overwhelmingly unvaccinated. Those who escape it are overwhelmingly vaccinated.

Indeed, beginning with the Nilometer, history records science’s slow-but-steady victories over nature’s malevolent side.

Each milestone is effectively marked: “People don’t have to die of what their forebears did.”

DeSantis says he wants parents to have the choice of sending their children to school masked or unmasked. A number of Florida’s school boards are suing DeSantis for preventing them from doing so.

DeSantis is not alone in his thinking.

“Texans, not government, should decide their best health practices,” Gov. Greg Abbott explained, when banning mask mandates in that state. Abbott himself tested positive for COVID-19, his office said Tuesday.

Freedom to choose has a certain intuitive appeal. But in practice, it’s often limited. Try telling a traffic cop you don’t think the government can make you buy auto insurance when he asks to see your license and insurance card.

The principle is that my autonomy ends where it might harm another person. If I don’t have insurance and bang into another car, the owner could be stuck with the repair bill.

Similarly those who won’t wear a mask or get vaccinated imperil others. They are walking Petri dishes for ever more dangerous COVID-19 variants, thus prolonging the epidemic ad infinitum.