Most of the anti-mandate people (I'm not one, to be clear) would be quite happy with a world where the interventions around COVID were awareness campaigns. And just as some people insist on not wearing condoms despite the risks, the same will be true of mask wearing and vaccines.
Would they be happy with "Knowingly infecting someone or non disclosure of positive infection status during possible transmission activities is a jailable offense" for COVID?
Ultimately these interventions, mandates and other public health measures, which wind up as a mix of education, awareness and mandates or laws become a balancing act between personal inconvenience and public good; so the work done for HIV is different from the intervention for covid-19 for that and other reasons.
The standard for criminal HIV transmission (in California, at least; it varies by state) is not "accidentally infecting someone while not knowing your status." It's not even "infecting someone without disclosing that you're HIV-positive while knowing you're HIV-positive." It's "intentionally infecting someone with HIV." And, explicitly, your knowledge of your positive status is not sufficient to establish intent.
