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I recall folks on the left mocking those who wanted the economy to partially reopen as “valuing a haircut more than human lives”. They mocked with derision the

I recall folks on the left mocking those who wanted the economy to partially reopen as “valuing a haircut more than human lives”. They mocked with derision the very real depression that I, and many other people here on HN, had as a function of being stuck inside 24/7 while watching businesses and jobs implode while COVID cases explode.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
giardini 6y ago
I heard this phrased another way: a wealth adviser stated (roughly) that "The question each individual faces is 'Would you give up all the money in your IRA so that some old person you don't know will not die?"' I think that question captures the essence of the situation better than the "haircut...lives" phrase.
- spaginal 6y ago
  The answer is no. Interacting with other humans inherently carries risk that you could harm others. I could get distracted by my children in the car and kill someone when I cross the center line. That doesn’t make me evil or selfish for wanting to own a car and drive it. It also doesn’t make someone selfish for wanting to support their family in normal commerce, in the rare chance that their very legal and very normal economic activity may inadvertently harm someone.
- chrisjs96 6y ago
  Nope because we're not saving any net lives. We're only exchanging lives during this whole thing. Exchanging mostly older folks for others. The whole quarantine can be described: If you have covid your life matters more than someone who has cancer or another illness. When all of our children become serial killers and cancer death rates rise we'll look back on this time as the worst decision the world has ever made. Being a human means excepting risk. You wake up everyday and take on risk. Yes some people are willing to take more risks than others. I'm an avid skydiver. To those people who don't like risk: Stay at home and get someone to deliver groceries and live your miserable life by yourself at home. Thanks.
  - zarkov99 6y ago
    Don't you think that the people in Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Germany, New Zealand, Portugal,etc, are better of for having accomplished an effective and relatively short-lived quarantine? In the US the choice did not have to be between indefinite home detention and 1/4 million excess deaths. We fucked this up.
emptysongglass 6y ago
What's worse is the Left's then about-face to let's pack tens of thousands of people together to protest exposing untold numbers more to the very virus they professed to oppose. The political "side" I once found myself cheering on has turned into a outrage-fueled hypocrisy-machine where the greatest victim wins.
- Spivak 6y ago
  I really don't think that's a totally fair take on the situation. The theme of the BLM protests was people taking on huge personal risk to seize an opportunity for change that might not present itself again. I don't think anyone was trying to argue that joining a crowd in a pandemic and standing opposed to police in riot gear itching to use it was a safe thing to do.
  - zarkov99 6y ago
    And no one principled would object to that if the risk was indeed personal. It is not, obviously, and the people protesting surely know it, so if you have a shred of intellectual honesty that noble narrative cannot possibly hold. The real truth is that these people weighted the risk of infecting themselves and others and decided on behalf of us all, that it was worth it.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      See that sounds good but that applies to everything anyone does right now. If you leave your home at all at this point you're making the choice that whatever you doing carries a risk of harming yourself and others. There's really no way to isolate the risk to just yourself. And so yeah, that was a real choice that made. Like my friends and I had to decide if worth it to join the protests and we were pretty firmly on the side of this was too important to not do. And so you're absolutely right but I feel like it's hard to be measured when the argument is "look the left is going out to march in a civil rights protest but doesn't want hair salons or schools to open -- the hipocrits!" There need to be some nuance here. I think most people agree that grocery stores and hospitals needs to be open and that chuck-e-cheese probably doesn't. I don't think it's at all hypocritical to take a stance in the middle. Of course there's going to be lots of disagreement about what falls on what side but that's the argument to have.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

giardini 6y ago

I heard this phrased another way: a wealth adviser stated (roughly) that "The question each individual faces is 'Would you give up all the money in your IRA so that some old person you don't know will not die?"' I think that question captures the essence of the situation better than the "haircut...lives" phrase.

spaginal 6y ago
The answer is no. Interacting with other humans inherently carries risk that you could harm others. I could get distracted by my children in the car and kill someone when I cross the center line. That doesn’t make me evil or selfish for wanting to own a car and drive it. It also doesn’t make someone selfish for wanting to support their family in normal commerce, in the rare chance that their very legal and very normal economic activity may inadvertently harm someone.
chrisjs96 6y ago
Nope because we're not saving any net lives. We're only exchanging lives during this whole thing. Exchanging mostly older folks for others. The whole quarantine can be described: If you have covid your life matters more than someone who has cancer or another illness. When all of our children become serial killers and cancer death rates rise we'll look back on this time as the worst decision the world has ever made. Being a human means excepting risk. You wake up everyday and take on risk. Yes some people are willing to take more risks than others. I'm an avid skydiver. To those people who don't like risk: Stay at home and get someone to deliver groceries and live your miserable life by yourself at home. Thanks.
- zarkov99 6y ago
  Don't you think that the people in Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Germany, New Zealand, Portugal,etc, are better of for having accomplished an effective and relatively short-lived quarantine? In the US the choice did not have to be between indefinite home detention and 1/4 million excess deaths. We fucked this up.

emptysongglass 6y ago

What's worse is the Left's then about-face to let's pack tens of thousands of people together to protest exposing untold numbers more to the very virus they professed to oppose. The political "side" I once found myself cheering on has turned into a outrage-fueled hypocrisy-machine where the greatest victim wins.

Spivak 6y ago
I really don't think that's a totally fair take on the situation. The theme of the BLM protests was people taking on huge personal risk to seize an opportunity for change that might not present itself again. I don't think anyone was trying to argue that joining a crowd in a pandemic and standing opposed to police in riot gear itching to use it was a safe thing to do.
- zarkov99 6y ago
  And no one principled would object to that if the risk was indeed personal. It is not, obviously, and the people protesting surely know it, so if you have a shred of intellectual honesty that noble narrative cannot possibly hold. The real truth is that these people weighted the risk of infecting themselves and others and decided on behalf of us all, that it was worth it.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    See that sounds good but that applies to everything anyone does right now. If you leave your home at all at this point you're making the choice that whatever you doing carries a risk of harming yourself and others. There's really no way to isolate the risk to just yourself. And so yeah, that was a real choice that made. Like my friends and I had to decide if worth it to join the protests and we were pretty firmly on the side of this was too important to not do. And so you're absolutely right but I feel like it's hard to be measured when the argument is "look the left is going out to march in a civil rights protest but doesn't want hair salons or schools to open -- the hipocrits!" There need to be some nuance here. I think most people agree that grocery stores and hospitals needs to be open and that chuck-e-cheese probably doesn't. I don't think it's at all hypocritical to take a stance in the middle. Of course there's going to be lots of disagreement about what falls on what side but that's the argument to have.