[bredren]

Any new precedent for completely closing borders between developed nations for any reason is bad. Because it creates a “we did this before.”

Even if the scale or details of circumstance are different—such as Clinton’s pardoning of his brother in minimizing Trump’s choices.

Another reason is exceptions cause outrage. And there may be many instances of diplomatic or other government travel that needs to happen or happen in the slipstream of limited public travel.

[GregarianChild]

Could you elaborate by which moral principle you come to the conclusion that a vague slippery slope and even more vague outrage is more important than stopping a pandemic with hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths?

Most moral systems of my acquantance are based on a hierachy of values that puts saving human lives over just about anything.

[FpUser]

>"Most moral systems of my acquantance are based on a hierachy of values that puts saving human lives over just about anything. "

False. While not explicitly stated there is a threshold usually measurable in money spent after which saving life is considered of being "not worth it". Ford Pinto case that went through the courts I think can serve as a very good particular example where cost analysis made it legal to allow otherwise preventable deaths.

[Pyxl101]

I don't necessarily subscribe to this point of view (I don't know what I believe; I need to think more), but allow me to play devil's advocate consider: most of the people who die from this disease are old people who have already lived their lives. The young are giving up the opportunity to live their lives by staying home to stop the spread, when they predominately aren't at risk of death. Should the young give up their lives to save the old? The young already sacrifice substantially for the old - in the United States by way of Medicare for example. The lives of many young people are completely on hold: they cannot go to school, cannot have weddings, cannot have fun, all to stop a disease that for most not-old healthy people is similar to the flu or even milder. If you're a young person you might not find this to be a worthwhile sacrifice - sacrificing years of your life to save people who have already lived "full" lives (that would be longer if not for COVID, but have made it to old age).

The vast majority of deaths are people over age 55: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Ag...

[jschwartzi]

If you get COVID and survive it some of the side effects you can look forward to are: motor control issues, traumatic brain injury, lung scarring, heart tissue scarring, and even limb amputation. It is not “milder than the flu.”

[nthj]

We’re asking people to stay home to help mitigate the collapse of health care systems, at which point the young will find that car crashes, heart attacks and strokes that they may have otherwise survive now become far more deadly.

[SomeoneFromCA]

What a bullshit argument.

[SomeoneFromCA]

Yea, slippery slope works both way, "we did not do this before", do not you think so? Remember that phrase about "the came after Jews, commies then after me"?

[Izkata]

> Remember that phrase about "the came after Jews, commies then after me"?

Possibly better known as "first they came for", apparently officially titled "First they came..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came