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Now imagine going out shopping, you’re stopped at the door, and you test positive. What happens then? The government puts you in a car and sends you... back to

Now imagine going out shopping, you’re stopped at the door, and you test positive. What happens then? The government puts you in a car and sends you... back to your apartment? Sounds like a dystopian nightmare, to be honest.

philwelch 7y ago
The store does not permit you to enter and you are asked to go home and self-quarantine.
- chatmasta 7y ago
  What if you infect someone on your way back?
  - macintux 7y ago
    You’re still in a much better position than we are today, where you’d infect several people in the store, and again the next day, and the next.
    - lolc 7y ago
      I'm weirded out by this binary thinking arguing against masks or testing. It's like the people who say that helmets don't prevent all injuries, which they conclude means one shouldn't be wearing one. Except that where helmets are only individual protection, measures against infection are affective at a population level, where you profit from others' actions.
floatingatoll 7y ago
You are handed a free mask that serves as warning people to give you space, and you are simultaneously logged as being infected with the CDC.
notatoad 7y ago
we're in the middle of a pandemic. at some point you've got to accept that dystopia is here, and the dystopian things that are happening are realistic ways of dealing with the situtuation. you can't reject solutions because they sound dystopian unless you've got better, non-dystopian solutions. and everybody has to stay in their homes at all times and all non-essential services are shut down is not a less dystopian solution.
- chatmasta 7y ago
  Fair enough. But I hope that line of reasoning has limits. After all, it would be safer to send everyone by truck to a quarantine camp instead of back to their apartment where they might infect their neighbors in the lobby, wouldn’t it?
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    That's actually how China handled it. If you test positive, you don't go home - you go to a facility to be quarantined and treated if necessary.
    - walterbell 7y ago
      That's been proposed in the northeast US (MA, NY, NJ, CT, RI). Hotels would be used for mandatory quarantine. Tests and contact tracing (manually, then smartphone) would determine who gets isolated.
- zaroth 7y ago
  The flu comes every year, and it’s not even a order of magnitude less fatal. Maybe COVID will come back every year too. What “solution” are you looking for to solve this relatively small share of “death from natural causes” that we call COVID? How much damage should we inflict upon ourselves in this moral quandary? How many people should die because we’re willing to spend trillions of dollars due to our innate fear of a virus rather than our innate fear of much much bigger problems, like poverty or starvation? Why can we muster so much energy in this case, and so little on much bigger problems? My theory is that you can’t catch hunger on the subway, you can’t catch underprivilege from a doorknob, and you can’t catch climate change from shaking hands with constituents. There’s a lot wrong with our planet, it’s too bad we’ll all go bankrupt and unemployed chasing such a trifling disease as COVID when there were actual real problems we could have solved with mountains of cash that large, rather that burning the cash in effigy for modest to no effect once COVID has run its course.
walterbell 7y ago
Not only you, but everyone who was recently within six feet of you as determined by contact tracing (manual now, bluetooth later). If you don't live alone, you go to a mandatory isolation center, possibly a designated hotel. Kids can be separated from parents. https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/04/03/contact-tracing-coronavirus-massachusetts-baker https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/04/03/contact-tracing... Now is the time to express opinions on these "proposals"..

philwelch 7y ago

The store does not permit you to enter and you are asked to go home and self-quarantine.

chatmasta 7y ago
What if you infect someone on your way back?
- macintux 7y ago
  You’re still in a much better position than we are today, where you’d infect several people in the store, and again the next day, and the next.
  - lolc 7y ago
    I'm weirded out by this binary thinking arguing against masks or testing. It's like the people who say that helmets don't prevent all injuries, which they conclude means one shouldn't be wearing one. Except that where helmets are only individual protection, measures against infection are affective at a population level, where you profit from others' actions.

floatingatoll 7y ago

You are handed a free mask that serves as warning people to give you space, and you are simultaneously logged as being infected with the CDC.

notatoad 7y ago

we're in the middle of a pandemic. at some point you've got to accept that dystopia is here, and the dystopian things that are happening are realistic ways of dealing with the situtuation. you can't reject solutions because they sound dystopian unless you've got better, non-dystopian solutions. and everybody has to stay in their homes at all times and all non-essential services are shut down is not a less dystopian solution.

chatmasta 7y ago
Fair enough. But I hope that line of reasoning has limits. After all, it would be safer to send everyone by truck to a quarantine camp instead of back to their apartment where they might infect their neighbors in the lobby, wouldn’t it?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  That's actually how China handled it. If you test positive, you don't go home - you go to a facility to be quarantined and treated if necessary.
  - walterbell 7y ago
    That's been proposed in the northeast US (MA, NY, NJ, CT, RI). Hotels would be used for mandatory quarantine. Tests and contact tracing (manually, then smartphone) would determine who gets isolated.
zaroth 7y ago
The flu comes every year, and it’s not even a order of magnitude less fatal. Maybe COVID will come back every year too. What “solution” are you looking for to solve this relatively small share of “death from natural causes” that we call COVID? How much damage should we inflict upon ourselves in this moral quandary? How many people should die because we’re willing to spend trillions of dollars due to our innate fear of a virus rather than our innate fear of much much bigger problems, like poverty or starvation? Why can we muster so much energy in this case, and so little on much bigger problems? My theory is that you can’t catch hunger on the subway, you can’t catch underprivilege from a doorknob, and you can’t catch climate change from shaking hands with constituents. There’s a lot wrong with our planet, it’s too bad we’ll all go bankrupt and unemployed chasing such a trifling disease as COVID when there were actual real problems we could have solved with mountains of cash that large, rather that burning the cash in effigy for modest to no effect once COVID has run its course.

walterbell 7y ago

Not only you, but everyone who was recently within six feet of you as determined by contact tracing (manual now, bluetooth later). If you don't live alone, you go to a mandatory isolation center, possibly a designated hotel. Kids can be separated from parents. https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/04/03/contact-tracing-coronavirus-massachusetts-baker https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/04/03/contact-tracing... Now is the time to express opinions on these "proposals"..