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by ceejayoz 2275 days ago
The problem with using "masks don't work!" to keep the supply available for healthcare is later on, when supply is available for universal mask wearing, they'll have eroded public trust when they do the 180 on the advice.

They should've instead:

* Banned sales of masks to the public until healthcare and other essential workers had enough stock.

* Honestly conveyed the reasons for the above ban, in WWII-style "do your part" advertisements etc.

* Encouraged homemade cloth masks, bandannas, etc. to reduce the spread of droplets.

* Ramped up surgical mask production to get supply to the general public as soon as possible.
1 comments
cmurf 2275 days ago
a) implies competency b) where's the profit? U.S. is a country where solidly 1/3, with enough political capital to prevent alternatives, believe that healthcare is a product not a right

(another 1/3 don't care because the system doesn't affect them, until it does)

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a_tractor 2274 days ago
>where solidly 1/3... believe that healthcare is a product not a right

And I guess the opposing 1/3 just don't understand the difference between positive and negative rights?

Healthcare, as a matter of fact, does represent a collection of products and services, and access to those products and services represent a positive right because it requires somebody else to provide something for you.

It is only negative rights, those which define what other people can not do to you, that should be considered inalienable. The right to free spreech doesn't require somebody else to go to school for 20 years so that you can express yourself, they just aren't allowed to prevent you from doing so.

Intentionally or not, people like you confuse the issue by treating both positive and negative rights as the same, and actually do not seem to understand, or are avoiding acknowledgment of the fact, that treating a positive right as some kind of natural right carries the high potential that you will be demanding access to another human being's labor or resources against their will, and in America, 1/3 of use are against the enslavement of others.

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