3 ms·

> 2% of your countries population might die. Is that acceptable for a developed country? Are you really a developed country if your relationship with death is

> 2% of your countries population might die. Is that acceptable for a developed country? Are you really a developed country if your relationship with death is such that you're only capable of considering lives saved and not properly considering the consequences of what you're doing to save those lives? Right now we're welcoming all sorts of authoritarian surveillance that we will have long after the virus is no longer a threat. Is that legacy worth 2%? I don't know the answer to that question, but I can't consider any place developed if they aren't really having that conversation. The legacy of our actions will outlive all of us. What legacy are we going to leave? A surveillance state? An awful economic situation for those in their prime working years? A national debt whose interest only will claim greater proportion of the country's economic output?

ksk 7y ago
Well but how do you evaluate the consequences of saving the lives? After all, discussing the value of human life might be one of the oldest debates in philosophy. To take an extreme example, is being poor worse than being dead? And to that point, do we all agree that being in a democracy means that your elected representative can make that choice for you? If you're at-risk, should you feel pressured to go back to your job (at the risk of being fired)? And then if your buddy is getting paid, either by the government, or the employer for sitting at home, why should you be forced to go to work? Making a national or even state policy that tackles all those issues is going to be quite a challenge...