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by thomaslord
2249 days ago
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Interestingly, you've decided to conflate two completely unrelated situations here! I can only guess at whether this is due to spending insufficient energy analyzing the situation, or simply motivated reasoning. Either way, it's important to recognize here that drinking coffee is a personal decision with personal consequences. Social distancing during a global pandemic has some personal consequences, but the majority of effects are on society (e.g. other people). By drinking coffee, flatTheCurve does no harm to people they come into contact with. By going into public, a hypothetical citizen exposes everyone they come into contact with to increased risk of infection. With infection comes risk of hospitalization, lifelong debilitating conditions (specifically permanent lung damage and strokes), and even death. Going out in public for non-life-sustaining reasons during a global pandemic is more similar to tying your grandmother to a chair and forcing her to play Russian roulette than it is to drinking coffee. |
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Just trying to get a read to know how to best respond. Everything we do in society carries risks, particularly of spreading infection (influenza, meningitis, staph, strep etc), and generally historically we have not taken such a hard-line stance. Was that historic stance actually mistaken, and we should have always enacted these measures, or do you believe that this sars-cov-2 outbreak is such a different beast that it’s warranted now but wasn’t warranted previously?
BTW I agree drinking coffee is different in that the risk is entirely personal. I just wonder why we don’t view exposure to pathogens by venturing out into society through the same lens.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. And again as I told the other commenter I should not have posted my comment since I should have known it would just derail the discussion, but I am hopeful that our discussion and others might actually make it retroactively “worth it” if that makes sense.