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I’d also like to see a lock down that doesn’t completely throw away our civil liberties. This is a serious issue, but I don’t want to be locked at home because

I’d also like to see a lock down that doesn’t completely throw away our civil liberties. This is a serious issue, but I don’t want to be locked at home because we’re fighting a “war on viruses” twenty years from now

mrfusion 7y ago
I worry about this too. I can’t believe you’re being downvoted. I hate to say it but this whole thread gives me the vibe of democracy dying to thunderous applause.
- freehunter 7y ago
  The downvotes are because millions of people will die because of this attitude.
  - __blockcipher__ 7y ago
    Totalitarian leaders always invoke the benefit of the masses when justifying their abuse. Personally, I believe very strongly in personal freedom, so I would absolutely rather have a million deaths than go into a state-mandated nationwide total lockdown. Anyway, the truth is it’s not an “either or” scenario. Hopefully there’s a sane middleground that we converge on :)
    - yibg 7y ago
      Would you sacrifice members of your family? A million is easier to justify when it's some nameless mass of people.
zebraflask 7y ago
Exactly! The "lock it all down" attitude has a heavy streak of unthinking authoritarianism to it that makes me very uncomfortable. Reasonable precautions? Of course. Going nuts and disrupting everyone's lives and businesses like that? I'd rather not.
- kaoD 7y ago
  > I'd rather not. Every other nation would rather not too but, as soon as every single hospital collapses due to the sheer volume of cases (it's really that bad)... oh, you'd all rather yep, just like we did. It doesn't look like the US is going the South Korean way. And when I say "the hospital collapses" I really mean it cannot even take care of other emergencies. There are not enough ICU beds nor ventilators. Period. Normal operation is mostly halted too (I know this from first hand). The worst is I know you won't listen, just like nobody else listened until it was too late. Quote me on that.
- solveit 7y ago
  As I see it, you have a choice between three options. 1. Go nuts and lock everything down, Wuhan-style. 2. Be really competent at testing people, tracking everyone they've come into contact with over the previous ~2 weeks, test them too, and recurse. South Korea/Singapore-style. 3. Accept that ~60% of your population will get the virus and take the ~million deaths. Obviously 2 is the best choice to take, but in the absence of competent government, you will inevitably get overreaching government because reasonable precautions taken by mediocre government DOES NOT WORK!
  - avip 7y ago
    60% of your population will get the virus and take the ~million deaths this implies 0.5% fatality rate. That's about an order of magnitude off.
    - solveit 7y ago
      You're right. I chose the optimistic end of fatality estimates because that's the conservative choice (for making the point I was making) but given that infrastructure will collapse in this scenario the true fatality rate is almost certain to be a lot higher.
    - jgalt212 7y ago
      I don't think there's enough data to say for sure on this in the sense that outside of S Korea, very few asymptomatic people have been tested.
ColanR 7y ago
I've been thinking this is a good test run to see how much authoritarianism the Western governments can get away with. If this turns into part of the yearly flu (which I've been hearing is getting more likely), then the 'war on viruses' could very well be a thing.
alisonatwork 7y ago
This. I live in China and while it is great that my city has only seen a handful of new infections over the past month, there are still fences up around neighborhoods, checkpoints everywhere, nervous cops doing "stop and frisk" to confirm people have valid travel passes etc. When I look at Taiwan, South Korea and other countries that have managed this outbreak without an extensive lockdown, I know what I'd prefer.
- CodeMage 7y ago
  Yeah, sure, we would all have preferred to have responsible politicians who handled this correctly. Guess what? That ship has sailed. Most countries have "leadership" that handled this abysmally and now we have to deal with all this crap in order to flatten the curve until there are treatments and vaccines available. My mom and dad are 73 years old and I don't give a damn about someone's tin-foil-hattery about "fighting the war on viruses 20 years from now", if I can keep them from dying. Go read some first-person accounts from people living in Italy, not just the ones about the roadblocks and forms you have to fill out, but also the ones from people who couldn't even say goodbye to their loved ones who died or the ones from HCWs about the collapse of their hospitals. All of us who are pissed off about the lockdowns should hold on to that anger and express it fully after we have to stop worrying about our parents and grandparents being left for dead.
  - mxcrossb 7y ago
    I don’t think it has to be a tinfoil approach though. I just mean, if we are going to restrict people, have aggressive sunset provisions on those orders (or poison pill the bill somehow to get more incentive to repeal it as soon as we beat this)
lend000 7y ago
People are eager to give the government power when they're scared. You can feel the panic in the HN threads -- at the end of the day, most people are herding animals. A free society can't effectively force a quarantine, outside of the voluntary recommendations already being provided for social distancing. That seems like a trade-off many would find reasonable if the plague wasn't currently on their minds (2% chance of dying in a plague every century in exchange for having civil liberties the rest of the time). What a free society could do is massively incentivize and subsidize new drug research, while lowering the barrier to entry for human trials. Right now this is only being done manually in the US with a few drugs and major players, such as Remdesivir, instead of allowing a systematic approach for non-major players to skip the line, too (e.g. university research labs).
- mnm1 7y ago
  The quarantine in China will end at some point, but you claim it won't end in the US if we give the government that power, a power it already has. Which one's the free country again?
  - nichos 7y ago
    The US is the free country, because we have no lockdown.
doctoboggan 7y ago
The US constitution gives the federal government the right to implement a quarantine and enforce it: "If a quarantinable disease is suspected or identified, CDC may issue a federal isolation or quarantine order. Public health authorities at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels may sometimes seek help from police or other law enforcement officers to enforce a public health order. U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Coast Guard officers are authorized to help enforce federal quarantine orders. Breaking a federal quarantine order is punishable by fines and imprisonment." https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantineisolation.html https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin...
- mrfusion 7y ago
  They’re just referencing the commerce clause. Can the commerce clause supercede the bill of rights?
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    Commerce clause has been used for all sorts of 2A regulations.
    - gnicholas 7y ago
      If you're thinking of the gun free school zone law, I don't think it quite supports your point. I believe the Commerce Clause was used to justify federal regulation of gun purchases/ownership, as opposed to it having to be a state law. It was not used (I believe) in any way to abrogate the rights afforded by the Second Amendment. I could be wrong — I never practiced law in this area — but I can't remember ever hearing about the Commerce Clause being used as a limitation on the Second Amendment. That is effectively what would be required here.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      The federal government regulates firearms under the commerce clause the same whey they regulate pharmaceuticals under the commerce clause. The difference is they can outright prohibit marijuana and not rifles because the latter prohibition would violate the second amendment. The commerce clause doesn't override the second amendment (or any other part of the bill of rights), there are only cases where a particular amendment was found not to apply. What you're looking for is emergency powers, but they're not actually in the constitution. In practice what has happened is that Presidents do whatever thing in an emergency and then get sued over it after, and typically lose, but by then it's years later and whatever temporary measures they ordered in the middle of the emergency are long since discontinued. It's kind of a kludge, but it also kind of works, because it keeps the emergency measures from extending longer than it takes for the courts to catch up to it, and also gives the victims of rights violations the ability to get compensated after the fact for being done wrong in the midst of a big mess.
yibg 7y ago
Seems like the two are a bit mutually exclusive no? I mean lock down implies limiting movement, which limits civil liberties. I don't really see how you can have a lock down without limiting civil liberties.

mrfusion 7y ago

I worry about this too. I can’t believe you’re being downvoted. I hate to say it but this whole thread gives me the vibe of democracy dying to thunderous applause.

freehunter 7y ago
The downvotes are because millions of people will die because of this attitude.
- __blockcipher__ 7y ago
  Totalitarian leaders always invoke the benefit of the masses when justifying their abuse. Personally, I believe very strongly in personal freedom, so I would absolutely rather have a million deaths than go into a state-mandated nationwide total lockdown. Anyway, the truth is it’s not an “either or” scenario. Hopefully there’s a sane middleground that we converge on :)
  - yibg 7y ago
    Would you sacrifice members of your family? A million is easier to justify when it's some nameless mass of people.

zebraflask 7y ago

Exactly! The "lock it all down" attitude has a heavy streak of unthinking authoritarianism to it that makes me very uncomfortable. Reasonable precautions? Of course. Going nuts and disrupting everyone's lives and businesses like that? I'd rather not.

kaoD 7y ago
> I'd rather not. Every other nation would rather not too but, as soon as every single hospital collapses due to the sheer volume of cases (it's really that bad)... oh, you'd all rather yep, just like we did. It doesn't look like the US is going the South Korean way. And when I say "the hospital collapses" I really mean it cannot even take care of other emergencies. There are not enough ICU beds nor ventilators. Period. Normal operation is mostly halted too (I know this from first hand). The worst is I know you won't listen, just like nobody else listened until it was too late. Quote me on that.
solveit 7y ago
As I see it, you have a choice between three options. 1. Go nuts and lock everything down, Wuhan-style. 2. Be really competent at testing people, tracking everyone they've come into contact with over the previous ~2 weeks, test them too, and recurse. South Korea/Singapore-style. 3. Accept that ~60% of your population will get the virus and take the ~million deaths. Obviously 2 is the best choice to take, but in the absence of competent government, you will inevitably get overreaching government because reasonable precautions taken by mediocre government DOES NOT WORK!
- avip 7y ago
  60% of your population will get the virus and take the ~million deaths this implies 0.5% fatality rate. That's about an order of magnitude off.
  - solveit 7y ago
    You're right. I chose the optimistic end of fatality estimates because that's the conservative choice (for making the point I was making) but given that infrastructure will collapse in this scenario the true fatality rate is almost certain to be a lot higher.
  - jgalt212 7y ago
    I don't think there's enough data to say for sure on this in the sense that outside of S Korea, very few asymptomatic people have been tested.

ColanR 7y ago

I've been thinking this is a good test run to see how much authoritarianism the Western governments can get away with. If this turns into part of the yearly flu (which I've been hearing is getting more likely), then the 'war on viruses' could very well be a thing.

alisonatwork 7y ago

This. I live in China and while it is great that my city has only seen a handful of new infections over the past month, there are still fences up around neighborhoods, checkpoints everywhere, nervous cops doing "stop and frisk" to confirm people have valid travel passes etc. When I look at Taiwan, South Korea and other countries that have managed this outbreak without an extensive lockdown, I know what I'd prefer.

CodeMage 7y ago
Yeah, sure, we would all have preferred to have responsible politicians who handled this correctly. Guess what? That ship has sailed. Most countries have "leadership" that handled this abysmally and now we have to deal with all this crap in order to flatten the curve until there are treatments and vaccines available. My mom and dad are 73 years old and I don't give a damn about someone's tin-foil-hattery about "fighting the war on viruses 20 years from now", if I can keep them from dying. Go read some first-person accounts from people living in Italy, not just the ones about the roadblocks and forms you have to fill out, but also the ones from people who couldn't even say goodbye to their loved ones who died or the ones from HCWs about the collapse of their hospitals. All of us who are pissed off about the lockdowns should hold on to that anger and express it fully after we have to stop worrying about our parents and grandparents being left for dead.
- mxcrossb 7y ago
  I don’t think it has to be a tinfoil approach though. I just mean, if we are going to restrict people, have aggressive sunset provisions on those orders (or poison pill the bill somehow to get more incentive to repeal it as soon as we beat this)

lend000 7y ago

People are eager to give the government power when they're scared. You can feel the panic in the HN threads -- at the end of the day, most people are herding animals. A free society can't effectively force a quarantine, outside of the voluntary recommendations already being provided for social distancing. That seems like a trade-off many would find reasonable if the plague wasn't currently on their minds (2% chance of dying in a plague every century in exchange for having civil liberties the rest of the time). What a free society could do is massively incentivize and subsidize new drug research, while lowering the barrier to entry for human trials. Right now this is only being done manually in the US with a few drugs and major players, such as Remdesivir, instead of allowing a systematic approach for non-major players to skip the line, too (e.g. university research labs).

mnm1 7y ago
The quarantine in China will end at some point, but you claim it won't end in the US if we give the government that power, a power it already has. Which one's the free country again?
- nichos 7y ago
  The US is the free country, because we have no lockdown.

doctoboggan 7y ago

The US constitution gives the federal government the right to implement a quarantine and enforce it: "If a quarantinable disease is suspected or identified, CDC may issue a federal isolation or quarantine order. Public health authorities at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels may sometimes seek help from police or other law enforcement officers to enforce a public health order. U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Coast Guard officers are authorized to help enforce federal quarantine orders. Breaking a federal quarantine order is punishable by fines and imprisonment." https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantineisolation.html https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/aboutlawsregulationsquarantin...

mrfusion 7y ago
They’re just referencing the commerce clause. Can the commerce clause supercede the bill of rights?
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  Commerce clause has been used for all sorts of 2A regulations.
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    If you're thinking of the gun free school zone law, I don't think it quite supports your point. I believe the Commerce Clause was used to justify federal regulation of gun purchases/ownership, as opposed to it having to be a state law. It was not used (I believe) in any way to abrogate the rights afforded by the Second Amendment. I could be wrong — I never practiced law in this area — but I can't remember ever hearing about the Commerce Clause being used as a limitation on the Second Amendment. That is effectively what would be required here.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    The federal government regulates firearms under the commerce clause the same whey they regulate pharmaceuticals under the commerce clause. The difference is they can outright prohibit marijuana and not rifles because the latter prohibition would violate the second amendment. The commerce clause doesn't override the second amendment (or any other part of the bill of rights), there are only cases where a particular amendment was found not to apply. What you're looking for is emergency powers, but they're not actually in the constitution. In practice what has happened is that Presidents do whatever thing in an emergency and then get sued over it after, and typically lose, but by then it's years later and whatever temporary measures they ordered in the middle of the emergency are long since discontinued. It's kind of a kludge, but it also kind of works, because it keeps the emergency measures from extending longer than it takes for the courts to catch up to it, and also gives the victims of rights violations the ability to get compensated after the fact for being done wrong in the midst of a big mess.

yibg 7y ago

Seems like the two are a bit mutually exclusive no? I mean lock down implies limiting movement, which limits civil liberties. I don't really see how you can have a lock down without limiting civil liberties.