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by fighterpilot
1787 days ago
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I prefer to frame it as a trade-off between one's individual rights (freedom of movement) with another's individual rights (freedom to not get infected with a dangerous contagious disease). If we do it this way, we can bypass some people's inbuilt defensive reactions, as well as really get to the core of whether it makes sense to have lockdowns. The flu is a rather deadly contagious disease (much less so than COVID) that we don't have lockdowns for. Where is the exact point in terms of disease-deadliness + lockdown-effectiveness where lockdowns are morally justified, versus where they aren't? Presumably it's some point between the flu's deadliness and COVID's deadliness. Where is that point? This is a public conversation that hasn't happened. > Australians did not protest against lockdowns; selfish idiots who happen to be Australian did. There's nothing inherently wrong with protesting against lockdowns. Australia is a democracy and not everyone is going to agree that lockdowns are justified policy. The problem was the way that people are protesting lockdowns - grouping up with no mask, which entails a massive negative externality. If they want to stand alone on a sidewalk with a sign and a mask, such protest should be fine by everyone in a healthy democracy. I think you probably accept this already, I just wanted to clarify. |
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Very true, there hasn't been any debate despite the efforts of many who foresaw this crisis happening. Right, we've had many warnings that that day would arrive and it's arrived right on cue.
However, it's not surprising there's been no debate for several reasons. The first is that in the absence of an imminent threat, apathy and hedonism reign over sense and prudence; and second, in western post-WWII societies, individualism has trounced on the older once-accepted notion of the collective good being more important than any one single individual is. Gone too are frightening fire-and-brimstone edicts from pulpits that damned those who failed to do the right thing.
That said, I'd contend that the debate is hardly necessary (at least among thinking people) given the upheaval—chaos, deaths, etc.—that COVID has brought to the whole globe. Its effects are easily an order of magnitude greater than that of influenza.
I accept that this isn't enough for some. What their threshold would be is hard to say. However we do know from history that by the time one in three are dying and bodies litter the streets as with medieval plagues then everyone is terrified into submission.